Edgar Hertwich

I am a Professor of Energy and Process Engineering and director of the Industrial Ecology Program at NTNU. I am a member of the International Panel for Sustainable Resource Management, where I lead the Working Group on the Environmental Impacts of Products and Materials. I also contribute to the Global Energy Assessment as lead analyst.  I have served the International Society of Industrial Ecology in various functions, including as a council member, and I am a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Industrial Ecology.

My research interests cover climate mitigation, life cycle assessment, sustainable consumption and production, trade and environment, and risk analysis. I am interested in understanding how activities in our society produce environmental pressures, the dynamics in our development that affect these driving forces and their resulting environmental pressures, and alternative courses of action that can reduce these pressures. What is the connection between human activities on the one hand and emissions and resource use on the other hand? What are the implications of our current development path? What do we need to change, both in terms of individual actions and policy frameworks, to achieve a more sustainable development?

I teach Energy and Environmental Consequences, a Master seminar, and a PhD course in Environmental Systems Analysis. Most of my Master students come from the International MSc Program in Industrial Ecology and the 5-year Master of Energy and Environmental Engineering Program. Several of my MSc students have done work that has subsequently been published in the scientific literature.

I was born in Salzburg, Austria. I have an engineering degree from the HTL Braunau, an Bachelor in physics (Magna Cum Laude) from Princeton University, and an MSc and PhD in energy & ressources from the University of California, Berkeley.

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