Volker Krey is the Research Group Leader of the Integrated Assessment & Climate Change group as part of IIASA's Energy, Climate and Environment (ECE) Program. Since May 2018 he also holds the position of an Adjunct Professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) where he teaches and collaborates with colleagues in the industrial ecology program and energy transition initiative.
He graduated in theoretical physics from the University of Dortmund (Germany) in 2002. In 2003, he joined the Institute of Energy Research - Systems Analysis and Technology Evaluation of the Research Centre Jülich, where he continued to work until 2007. Since 2006, he has held a PhD in mechanical engineering from the Ruhr-University Bochum (Germany). Dr. Krey first visited IIASA as a participant of the Young Scientists Summer Program (YSSP) in 2004. He joined IIASA's Energy Program in October 2007, and became the Energy Program’s Deputy Director in 2011.
Dr. Krey's main field of scientific interest are the integrated assessment of climate change and the linkages to a broader suite of sustainable development objectives, including reduced air pollution and water use as well as improved energy access and food security. His work focuses on the development and application of integrated assessment models (IAMs) with different regional focuses (national to global scale) and time horizons. Over the past few years, 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.
Dr. Krey has been appointed a Lead Author of the IPCC 6th Assessment Report of Working Group III, and was previously serving as a Lead Author of the IPCC 5th Assessment Report, the Global Energy Assessment (GEA), and the IPCC Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation. Between 2010 and 2020 he served as an Associate Deputy Editor of the journal Climatic Change.