Background and activities
I am professor of industrial sustainability at Yale University and director of the Yale Center for Industrial Ecology. I am a guest researcher at NTNU. I served as a Professor of Energy and Process Engineering and director of the Industrial Ecology Program at NTNU from 2003 to 2015. In the fall semester of 2019, I will join NTNU as International Chair.
I am a member of the International Resource Panel , where I lead an assessment report on resource efficiency and climate change at the request of the G7. I have contributed to the IPCC 5th assessment report as a lead author of the energy systems chapter and the methods annex, as well as a contributor to the Technical Summary and the Summary for Policy makers. Further, I have contributed to the Global Energy Assessment. I am a member of the editorial board of Environmental Science & Technology, the Journal of Industrial Ecology, and the Journal of Economic Structures.
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.
Research
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?
Previous NTNU Projects
- GLAMURS: Green Lifestyles, Alternative Models and Upscaling Regional Sustainability
- DESIRE: Development of a System of Indicators for a Resource-Efficient Europe
- ADVANCE: Model development and validation for climate policy analysis
- Carbon CAP: Consumption-based accounting and policy
- CENSES: Center for sustainable energy studies
Links:
Scientific, academic and artistic work
A selection of recent journal publications, artistic productions, books, including book and report excerpts. See all publications in the database
Journal publications
- (2019) Connecting global emissions to fundamental human needs and their satisfaction. Environmental Research Letters. vol. 14 (1).
- (2018) Deriving life cycle assessment coefficients for application in integrated assessment modelling. Environmental Modelling & Software. vol. 99.
- (2018) Nullius in Verba: Advancing Data Transparency in Industrial Ecology. Journal of Industrial Ecology. vol. 22 (1).
- (2018) The growing importance of scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions from industry. Environmental Research Letters. vol. 13 (10).
- (2018) Carbon mitigation in domains of high consumer lock-in. Global Environmental Change. vol. 52.
- (2018) Choice of Allocations and Constructs for Attributional or Consequential Life Cycle Assessment and Input-Output Analysis. Journal of Industrial Ecology. vol. 22 (4).
- (2018) Endogenizing capital in MRIO models - the implications for consumption-based accounting. Environmental Science and Technology.
- (2018) Environmental Impacts of Capital Formation. Journal of Industrial Ecology. vol. 22 (1).
- (2018) Prioritizing Consumption-Based Carbon Policy Based on the Evaluation of Mitigation Potential Using Input-Output Methods. Journal of Industrial Ecology. vol. 22 (3).
- (2018) High sensitivity of metal footprint to national GDP in part explained by capital formation. Nature Geoscience. vol. 11 (4).
- (2017) Life cycle assessment demonstrates environmental co-benefits and trade-offs of low-carbon electricity supply options. Renewable & Sustainable Energy Reviews. vol. 76.
- (2017) Health benefits, ecological threats of low-carbon electricity. Environmental Research Letters. vol. 12 (3).
- (2017) Mapping the carbon footprint of EU regions. Environmental Research Letters. vol. 12 (5).
- (2017) Hybrid life cycle assessment of a geothermal plant: From physical to monetary inventory accounting. Journal of Cleaner Production. vol. 142.
- (2017) Industrial ecology in integrated assessment models. Nature Climate Change. vol. 7.
- (2017) Understanding future emissions from low-carbon power systems by integration of life-cycle assessment and integrated energy modelling. Nature Energy. vol. 2 (12).
- (2016) Environmental impacts of high penetration renewable energy scenarios for Europe. Environmental Research Letters. vol. 11:014012.
- (2016) Environmental impacts of balancing offshore wind power with compressed air energy storage (CAES). Energy. vol. 95.
- (2016) Environmental Impact Assessment of Household Consumption. Journal of Industrial Ecology. vol. 20 (3).
- (2016) Mapping the Carbon Footprint of Nations. Environmental Science and Technology. vol. 50 (19).