Giacomo Falchetta
Research Scholar
Integrated Assessment and Climate Change Research Group
Energy, Climate, and Environment Program
Biography
Giacomo Falchetta is a research scholar in the Integrated Assessment and Climate Change Research Group of the IIASA Energy, Climate, and Environment Program. He joined IIASA in October 2021, after being affiliated with the Institute as a guest research scholar between 2018 and 2019.Falchetta also holds a scientific affiliation at the Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change (CMCC) and serves on the editorial board of the journal, Environmental Research: Infrastructure and Sustainability. Before joining IIASA, he was a doctoral researcher in the Future Energy Program at the Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM) in Milan, and he subsequently held postdoctoral positions at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano and at Ca' Foscari University of Venice.
An environmental and energy economist by training, his research combines applied statistics, geospatial analysis, and data-driven modeling to study climate change impacts and adaptation. His current work focuses on climate risk, as well as the design and evaluation of adaptation options and the interactions between climate, energy, water, and food systems. A cross-cutting theme he focuses on is adaptation outcomes and how they are shaped at different levels of decision-making, including households, infrastructure providers, and national and global policy. He also explores how equity considerations arise across those levels.
At IIASA, he has coordinated modeling activities of the Long-term Europe Africa Partnership on Renewable Energy (LEAP-RE), a joint initiative of the European Union and African Union. In 2024, he was awarded the IIASA Innovative and Bridging Grant (IBGF) to work on granular data approaches for urban-scale climate adaptation.
He has published more than 40 papers in peer-reviewed journals and was a contributing author to the UNEP Adaptation Gap Report in 2025. He also contributed to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the International Energy Agency (IEA) reports as a reviewer.
Falchetta holds a PhD from the Department of International Economics of the Catholic University of Milan, Italy, a master's degree in environmental and climate change economics from the London School of Economics, UK, and a bachelor's degree in economics and social sciences from the Free University of Bolzano-Bozen, Italy.
Last update: 09 SEP 2026
Publications
Cofler, E., Colelli, F.P., Falchetta, G. , & Tavoni, M. (2026). Modeling policies for the EU building stock decarbonization at sub-national resolution. Energy and Buildings 362 e117521. 10.1016/j.enbuild.2026.117521.
Aboudrar-Méda, A. & Falchetta, G. (2026). Urban green space metric choice and weighting matter for assessing cooling benefits for human health. Environmental Research: Infrastructure and Sustainability 6 (2) e021001. 10.1088/2634-4505/ae75a1.
Falchetta, G. , De Cian, E., & Lunghi, J. (2026). Street green space and electricity demand: Evidence from metered consumption data. Energy Economics 158 e109311. 10.1016/j.eneco.2026.109311.
Falchetta, G. , Mazzone, A., Bhasin, S., Davide, M., Bezerra, P., Fabbri, K., Bertarelli, G., Pistorio, A., Dal Barco, I., & De Cian, E. (2026). A multidimensional assessment of systemic cooling poverty in the global south. Nature Sustainability 10.1038/s41893-026-01845-4. (In Press)
Falchetta, G. , Lohrey, S., Souverijns, N., Lauwaet, D., Schleussner, C.-F. , & Niamir, L. (2026). Street green space is relevant but not sufficient for adapting to growing urban heat in world cities. Environmental Research Letters 21 (8) e084012. 10.1088/1748-9326/ae5c20.