Bas van Ruijven
Research Group Leader and Principal Research Scholar
Sustainable Service Systems Research Group
Energy, Climate, and Environment Program
Principal Research Scholar
Transformative Institutional and Social Solutions Research Group
Energy, Climate, and Environment Program
Principal Research Scholar
Integrated Assessment and Climate Change Research Group
Energy, Climate, and Environment Program
Biography
Bas van Ruijven leads the Sustainable Service Systems (S3) Research Group of the IIASA Energy, Climate, and Environment (ECE) Program. His research interests cover a wide range of topics, from energy and technology scenarios to energy transitions in developing countries and the role of behavioral change in mitigation.He holds an MSc in Environmental Science (2004) and a PhD in Energy Science (2008) from Utrecht University in the Netherlands. From 2011 to 2017, van Ruijven worked as project scientist with the Integrated Assessment Modeling group at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, CO, USA. During 2016-2017, he was also a visiting scholar and research scientist at the Boston University Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future. Before moving to the USA in 2011, he was a policy researcher at the IMAGE Integrated Assessment Modeling group of the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL). During his PhD research, he was a visiting researcher at Chalmers University in Gothenburg, Sweden, and the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore.
He is co-chair of the International Committee On New Integrated Climate change assessment Scenarios (ICONICS) and Coordinating Lead Author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Seventh Assessment Report (AR7) Working Group III Chapter on Demand and Services.
Last update: 04 MAY 2026
Publications
Brutschin, E. , Pianta, S., Tavoni, M., Riahi, K. , Bosetti, V., Marangoni, G., & van Ruijven, B.J. (2021). A multidimensional feasibility evaluation of low-carbon scenarios. Environmental Research Letters 16 (6) 064069. 10.1088/1748-9326/abf0ce.
Pianta, S., Brutschin, E. , van Ruijven, B. , & Bosetti, V. (2021). Faster or slower decarbonization? Policymaker and stakeholder expectations on the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the global energy transition. Energy Research & Social Science 76 e102025. 10.1016/j.erss.2021.102025.
Bertram, C., Hilaire, J., Kriegler, E., Beck, T., Bresch, D., Clarke, L., Cui, R., Edmonds, J., Charles, M., Zhao, A., Kropf, C., Sauer, I., Lejeune, Q., Pfleiderer, P., Min, J. , Piontek, F., Rogelj, J. , Schleussner, C.F., Sferra, F., van Ruijven, B. , Yu, S., Holland, D., Liadze, I., & Hurst, I. (2021). NGFS Climate Scenario Database: Technical Documentation V2.2. Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), University of Maryland (UMD), Climate Analytics (CA), Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETHZ)
Bertram, C., van Ruijven, B. , Hilaire, J., Kriegler, E., Clarke, L., Cui, R., Edmonds, J., Charles, M., Zhao, A., Sauer, I., Min, J. , Piontek, F., Rogelj, J. , Sferra, F., Yu, S., Holland, D., Liadze, I., & Hurst, I. (2021). NGFS Climate Scenarios Data Set. 10.5281/zenodo.5782903.
Battiston, S., Monasterolo, I., Riahi, K. , & van Ruijven, B.J. (2021). Accounting for finance is key for climate mitigation pathways. Science eabf3877. 10.1126/science.abf3877.