Edgar Hertwich

Edgar Hertwich is a Principal Research Scholar in the Energy, Climate, and Environment Program of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) and a partner of XIO Sustainability Analytics. He has a keen interest in studying the interaction of physical and social systems in shaping the outcomes of social, economic, and technological development. His methods include life-cycle assessment, input-output economics, dynamic product cohort models, and statistics. Some of his key scientific contributions have emerged from or been documented in IRP reports. 

Priority Products and Materials (2009): Quantification of carbon footprints of consumption across countries and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions embodied in international trade, investigating the role of consumption and trade in causing climate change. 
Green Energy Choices (2016): Environmental life cycle assessment of energy scenarios, enabling the identifications of the significant synergies and trade-offs of the energy transition away from fossil fuels. 
Resource Efficiency and Climate Change (2019): The study of climate benefits and resource savings of the circular economy, material efficiency, and demand reduction, addressing the most important material uses in society: buildings, transport systems, and machinery and equipment.

Currently, Hertwich co-leads an IRP study on the Decarbonizing Metro Regions and the Global Resources Outlook 2028. In addition, he has served as a co-author of the reports on Resource Efficiency for Sustainable Development (2019), Resource Efficiency (2017) and Green Technology Choices (2017). The work for the IRP lead to the development of the THEMIS and ODYM-RECC models. Currently, Edgar Hertwich has also worked regional studies on material efficiency in the building and construction sectors of Argentina, Indonesia, and Mexico, as well as Bangladesh and Ghana. The studies helped to contextualize the modelling and policy analysis of the IRP report on Resource Efficiency and Climate Change in these countries.

Outside the IRP, Hertwich has recently served as a member of the EU’s Climate Advisory Board (2022-2026). He has also served as a lead author of the energy chapter of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC’s) 5^th assessment report and a lead author of UNEP’s Emissions Gap Report (2019). 

Hertwich was a professor of Industrial Ecology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) and of Yale University. He has served as president of the International Society for Industrial Ecology (2017-18). He is a member of the editorial board of Environmental Science & Technology, the Journal of Industrial Ecology, and the Journal of Economic Structures.  Hertwich grew up in Austria. He earned a Bachelor in physics from Princeton University and a PhD in energy and resources from the University of California, Berkeley, in the USA.

Selected Publications

E Hertwich, Increased carbon footprint of materials production driven by rise in investments. Nature Geoscience 14, 151-155, 2021

Stefan Pauliuk, Niko Heeren, Peter Berrill, Tomer Fishman, Andrea Nistad, Qingshi Tu, Paul Wolfram, Edgar G Hertwich, Global scenarios of resource and emission savings from material efficiency in residential buildings and cars. Nature Communications 12, 1-10, 2021

Berrill, P., Miller, T. R., Kondo, Y., & Hertwich, E. G. (2019). Capital in the American carbon, energy, and material footprint. Journal of Industrial Ecology, jiec.12953. https://doi.org/10.1111/jiec.12953

Hertwich, E. G. (2020). Carbon fueling complex global value chains tripled in the period 1995–2012. Energy Economics, 86, 104651. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eneco.2019.104651

Hertwich, E. G., Ali, S., Ciacci, L., Fishman, T., Heeren, N., Masanet, E., Asghari, F. N., Olivetti, E., Pauliuk, S., Tu, Q., & Wolfram, P. (2019). Material efficiency strategies to reducing greenhouse gas emissions associated with buildings, vehicles, and electronics—A review. Environmental Research Letters, 14(4), 043004. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ab0fe3

Hertwich, E. G., Gibon, T., Bouman, E. A., Arvesen, A., Suh, S., Heath, G. A., Bergesen, J. D., Ramirez, A., Vega, M. I., & Shi, L. (2014). Integrated life-cycle assessment of electricity-supply scenarios confirms global environmental benefit of low-carbon technologies. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 120, 6277–6282. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1312753111

Ivanova, D., Vita, G., Wood, R., Lausselet, C., Dumitru, A., Krause, K., Macsinga, I., & Hertwich, E. G. (2018). Carbon mitigation in domains of high consumer lock-in. Global Environmental Change, 52, 117–130. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2018.06.006

Luderer, G., Pehl, M., Arvesen, A., Gibon, T., Bodirsky, B. L., de Boer, H. S., Fricko, O., Hejazi, M., Humpenöder, F., Iyer, G., Mima, S., Mouratiadou, I., Pietzcker, R. C., Popp, A., van den Berg, M., van Vuuren, D., & Hertwich, E. G. (2019). Environmental co-benefits and adverse side-effects of alternative power sector decarbonization strategies. Nature Communications, 10(1), 5229. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-13067-8

Pauliuk, S., Fishman, T., Heeren, N., Berrill, P., Tu, Q., Wolfram, P., & Hertwich, E. G. (2020). Linking Service Provision to Material Cycles – A New Framework for Studying the Resource Efficiency-Climate Change Nexus (RECC). https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/7ubrp

Wolfram, P., & Hertwich, E. (2019). Representing vehicle-technological opportunities in integrated energy modeling. Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment, 73, 76–86. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trd.2019.06.006

Zheng, X., Wang, R., Wood, R., Wang, C., & Hertwich, E. G. (2018). High sensitivity of metal footprint to national GDP in part explained by capital formation. Nature Geoscience, 11(4), 269–273. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-018-0091-y

Videos

IRP Webinar: Green Energy Choices an Environmental Assessment of Low Carbon Electricity, 2016, Yale Center for Business and the Environment

Edgar Hertwich talks about renewable energy and climate change, 2014, Norwegian University of Science and Technology

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