Nebojsa Nakicenovic is Deputy Director General/Deputy CEO of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) and former Full Professor of Energy Economics at the Vienna University of Technology.
He was born in former Yugoslavia, is originally from Montenegro, and a citizen of Austria. Most of his youth he spent on the Adriatic coast in the family’s village high up in the mountains, while his professional life he spent in the U.S., Germany, Japan and mostly Austria. Through his personal and professional experiences he is acutely aware of the challenges posed to developed and developing nations from climate change, devoting much of his career to understanding these impacts and their respective mitigation and adaptation options.
Nebojsa Nakicenovic primary research focus has been on how energy-systems can be transformed toward a sustainable future within planetary boundaries. This includes strategies for successful technology diffusion, financing and adoption consistent with local circumstances and with the objective of improving human equity and wellbeing. His work is especially based on comprehensive assessments of energy technologies and scenarios such as those of the Millennium Ecosystems Assessment (MEA) (2005) and the Global Energy Assessment (GEA), (2012). GEA was the first ever fully integrated assessment analyzing energy challenges, opportunities and strategies for developing, industrialized and emerging economies and provided the scientific basis for the Sustainable Energy for All (SE4ALL) initiative, of which he is an advisor (Member of the UN Secretary General High-Level Technical Group on Sustainable Energy for All, and the UN Secretary General Advisory Group on Energy and Climate Change).
Most recently Nebojsa Nakicenovic was Project Leader of the Austrian Panel on Climate Change Assessment Report (APCC-ARR14) which represents the first comprehensive analysis of climate change in Austria, including climate impacts, vulnerability, and mitigation options. For this, the IPCC approach was applied to a national level assessment, rooting it deeply in the traditions of IPCC and related works such as GEA. He has been engaged in the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in various roles since its inception.
Nebojsa Nakicenovic has published more than 300 publications and has served on over ten Journal Editorial Boards. His scientific contributions have enriched the debate and the knowledge on the links between climate and development, the synergies of the pillars of sustainable development, the urgent need to build and strengthen bridges between science and policy, and most importantly the pressing need for a transformative agenda as a conduit to a sustainable world.
Visit Nebojsa Nakicenovic’s site on Google Scholar for more detailed information on his publications.