Tommaso Zaini
Researcher
Sustainable Service Systems Research Group
Energy, Climate, and Environment Program
Biography
Tommaso Zaini is a researcher in the IIASA Energy, Climate, and Environment Program, where he investigates equitable energy consumption pathways and decent living standards across regions. As a young graduate in environmental engineering and systems modeling, he studies the connection between socioeconomic prosperity and ecological limits by assessing how different levels of consumption determine future energy demand and emissions, and how technology and infrastructure foster or hinder equitable and sustainable consumption. His work aims at bridging bottom-up analysis of service provisioning with top-down projections on energy availability and inequality.Prior to joining IIASA, Zaini was a visiting student at the RFF-CMCC European Institute on Economics and the Environment, where he adapted the RICE50+ Integrated Assessment Model to explore the sectoral dynamics of climate mitigation, focusing on decarbonization costs and policy prioritization. He also spent a semester at the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission, evaluating new methods to assess the effectiveness of energy efficiency policies in the EU buildings sector.
His background is multidisciplinary and quantitative; he holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in environmental and land planning engineering from Politecnico di Milano, Italy, complemented by an exchange at the Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussees in Paris, France.
Last update: 05 NOV 2025
Publications
Streeck, J., Veléz-Henao, J.A., Kikstra, J. , Pachauri, S. , Min, J. , Krausmann, F., Haberl, H., Pauliuk, S., Zaini, T. , & Wiedenhofer, D. (2025). Small increases in material stocks to achieve decent living standards globally. Nature Sustainability 10.1038/s41893-025-01670-1.