Volker Krey
Research Group Leader and Principal Research Scholar
Sustainable Service Systems Research Group
Energy, Climate, and Environment Program
Research Group Leader and Principal Research Scholar
Integrated Assessment and Climate Change Research Group
Energy, Climate, and Environment Program
Biography
Volker Krey leads the Integrated Assessment and Climate Change Research Group of the IIASA Energy, Climate, and Environment Program.
His main fields of scientific interest include the integrated assessment of climate change and the link to a broader suite of sustainable development objectives such as improved air quality, sustainable water use, and energy access, as well as the interaction with material cycles via circular economy strategies. His work focuses on the development and application of integrated assessment models (IAMs) with different regional focuses (subnational to global scale) and time horizons. Over the past decade, he has been overseeing the development of the MESSAGEix model at IIASA and its recent release as an open source tool. As a co-chair of the scientific working group on data protocols and management of the Integrated Assessment Modeling Consortium (IAMC), he has significantly contributed to improving transparency and data sharing in the IAM community.
Krey has served as a Lead Author of multiple IPCC Reports, including the 5th and 6th Assessment Reports of Working Group III, and the Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation. He has coauthored more than 120 publications that have been cited well over 20,000 times in total. From 2018 to 2024 he has been acknowledged as a Highly Cited Researcher by Clarivate in their annual rankings.
Last update: 19 NOV 2025
Publications
Harmsen, M.J.H.M., van den Berg, M., Krey, V. , Luderer, G., Marcucci, A., Strefler, J., & van Vuuren, D.P. (2016). How climate metrics affect global mitigation strategies and costs: a multi-model study. Climatic Change 136 (2) 203-216. 10.1007/s10584-016-1603-7.
Leibowicz, B.D., Krey, V. , & Grubler, A. (2016). Representing spatial technology diffusion in an energy system optimization model. Technological Forecasting and Social Change 103 350-363. 10.1016/j.techfore.2015.06.001.
Parkinson, S. , Djilali, N., Krey, V. , Fricko, O. , Johnson, N., Khan, Z., Sedraoui, K., & Almasoud, A.H. (2016). Impacts of Groundwater Constraints on Saudi Arabia’s Low-Carbon Electricity Supply Strategy. Environmental Science & Technology 50 (4) 1653-1662. 10.1021/acs.est.5b05852.
Smith, P., Davis, S.J., Creutzig, F., Fuss, S., Rogelj, J. , McCollum, D., Krey, V. , Grubler, A. , Jonas, M. , Kraxner, F., Nakicenovic, N. , Obersteiner, M. , & Rogner, M. (2016). Biophysical and economic limits to negative CO2 emissions. Nature Climate Change 6 (1) 42-50. 10.1038/nclimate2870.
Jewell, J. , Vinichenko, V., McCollum, D., Bauer, N., Riahi, K. , Aboumahboub, T., Fricko, O. , Harmsen, M., Kober, T., Krey, V. , Marangoni, G., Tavoni, M., van Vuuren, D.P., van der Zwaan, B., & Cherp, A. (2016). Comparison and interactions between the long-term pursuit of energy independence and climate policies. Nature Energy 1 e16073. 10.1038/nenergy.2016.73.