Energy

The goal of the Energy Program (ENE) is to better understand the dynamics of future energy transitions, their main driving forces, enabling factors, and barriers, as well as the consequences of those transitions for the social, economic, and environmental dimensions of human wellbeing.

While energy underpins all human activities and is central for human wellbeing, the current unsustainable use of energy is the source of major environmental, social, and economic challenges. ENE’s main objective is to identify viable strategies for a fundamental global energy transformation towards sustainability. Due to the multi-faceted interaction of energy with human and environmental systems, ENE’s research spans many domains, including research in energy security, energy and poverty, and energy–environment linkages, and necessarily adopts a holistic and integrated perspective.

A main strength of the program is its ability to understand salient trade-offs and synergies between multiple policy priorities and objectives in different sectors. Building on a long tradition at IIASA going back to its foundation, ENE’s modeling tools stand at the heart of the IIASA Integrated Assessment framework, exploring linked solutions for energy, food, land, and water.