Peter Rafaj profile picture

Peter Rafaj

Senior Research Scholar

Pollution Management Research Group

Energy, Climate, and Environment Program

Biography

Peter Rafaj joined the Air Quality and Greenhouse Gases (AIR) Program (formerly Mitigation of Air Pollution and Greenhouse Gases Program) as a Research Scholar in October 2005. His research interests include the development and application of the Greenhouse Gas and Air Pollution Interactions and Synergies (GAINS) model for co-benefits assessment involving linkages with various global and regional energy models. His expertise comprises decomposition analysis of emission trends, as well as the implementation of the GAINS methodology and databases for scenarios of air emissions and mercury. He contributed to numerous mitigation policy analyses in Europe, Asia and worldwide.

Before joining IIASA, Dr. Rafaj worked as a research assistant at the energy economics group of the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) in Villigen, Switzerland, with a focus on the modeling of long-term climate policy scenarios. He contributed to the research tasks of the Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research on Climate (NCCR Climate). Between 1995 and 2001, Dr. Rafaj worked at several agencies in Slovakia, focusing on the environmental impact evaluation of the energy sector. Dr. Rafaj graduated in applied and environmental geophysics from the Comenius University in Bratislava, Slovakia in 1995, and also studied environmental management at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. In 2005 he was awarded his doctoral degree at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich.


Last update: 15 APR 2016

Publications

Rodés-Bachs, C., Drouet, L., Rafaj, P. , Tavoni, M., & Reis, L.A. (2025). Beyond the limit: The estimated air pollution damages of overshooting the temperature target. Science Advances 11 (42) eadu7590. 10.1126/sciadv.adu7590.

Dastoor, A., Angot, H., Bieser, J., Brocza, F. , Edwards, B., Feinberg, A., Feng, X., Geyman, B., Gournia, C., He, Y., Hedgecock, I.M., Ilyin, I., Kirk, J., Lin, C.-J., Lehnherr, I., Mason, R., McLagan, D., Muntean, M., Rafaj, P. , Roy, E.M., Ryjkov, A., Selin, N.E., De Simone, F., Soerensen, A.L., Steenhuisen, F., Travnikov, O., Wang, S., Wang, X., Wilson, S., Wu, R., Wu, Q., Zhang, Y., Zhou, J., Zhu, W., & Zolkos, S. (2025). The Multi-Compartment Hg Modeling and Analysis Project (MCHgMAP): mercury modeling to support international environmental policy. Geoscientific Model Development 18 (9) 2747-2860. 10.5194/gmd-18-2747-2025.

Klimont, Z. , Kiesewetter, G. , Schöpp, W. , Gomez Sanabria, A. , Rafaj, P. , Purohit, P. , Borken-Kleefeld, J. , Wagner, F. , Heyes, C. , Höglund-Isaksson, L. , Nguyen, B. , Sander, R. , & Warnecke, L. (2025). Chapter 1: Bringing Clean Air, Better Health, A Stable Climate and Other Benefits to the ASEAN Region. In: Clean Air and Climate Solutions for ASEAN. Eds. United Nations Environment Programme, pp. 1-17 United Nations Environment Programme. ISBN 9789280742138 10.59117/20.500.11822/47268.

World Bank (2025). Clean Air for Hanoi: What will it Take? World Bank