Edward Byers

Edward Byers is a Research Scholar in the Energy (ENE) program, with research interests in infrastructure systems, water and climate change risks, the water-energy nexus and development. He joined IIASA in 2016, as an IIASA Postdoctoral Research Fellow in both the Energy and Water programs.

Currently, Dr Byers' research at IIASA is on climate change impacts to the energy and water sectors using global impact, hydrological and integrated assessment models. He currently leads the global vulnerability hotspots assessment as part of the GEF-IIASA-UNIDO funded project on Integrated Solutions for Water, Energy and Land. His previous work includes water use of electricity pathways, climate impacts on CCS power plants, climate impacts on capacity expansion modeling, catchment hydrology and simulation of water withdrawal licensing regimes.

Dr. Byers joined IIASA from the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford where he worked on the MaRIUS project, investigating the impacts of drought on the energy sector in the UK. Dr. Byer's PhD research at Newcastle University investigated current and future water use of the UK electricity sector, assessed at national, regional and catchment scales, and contributed to activities of the UK Infrastructure Transitions Research Consortium.

Previously, he trained as a civil and environmental engineer (M.Eng, Newcastle). He was lead author of Working Paper 9 (Energy: coal, oil, gas, and nuclear) to the LWEC Climate Risks to Infrastructure Report Card (2014) and also performed similar climate risk analysis in consultancy with the national power producer of Turkey (2014-15). Dr. Byers was on the DECC Youth Advisory Panel in 2011, from 2012-2014 he was Scientific Officer of the Planet Earth Institute and from 2014-2016 was Energy Topic Editor of Global Water Forum.


Last update: 10-APR-2018

Qin Y, Höglund Isaksson L, Byers E, Feng K, Wagner F, Peng W, & Mauzerall DL (2018). Air Quality-Carbon-Water Synergies and Trade-offs in China’s Natural Gas Industry. Nature Sustainability 1 (9): 505-511. DOI:10.1038/s41893-018-0136-7.

Hunt J, Byers E, Riahi K, & Langan S (2018). Comparison between seasonal pumped-storage and conventional reservoir dams from the water, energy and land nexus perspective. Energy Conversion and Management 166: 385-401. DOI:10.1016/j.enconman.2018.04.044.

Parkinson S, Krey V, Huppmann D, Kahil T, McCollum D, Fricko O, Byers E, Gidden M, et al. (2018). Balancing clean water-climate change mitigation tradeoffs. IIASA Working Paper. IIASA, Laxenburg, Austria: WP-18-005

Byers E, Gidden M, Leclere D, Burek P, Ebi KL, Greve P, Grey D, Havlik P, et al. (2018). Global exposure and vulnerability to multi-sector development and climate change hotspots. Environmental Research Letters 13: e055012. DOI:10.1088/1748-9326/aabf45.

Liu L, Parkinson S, Gidden M, Byers E, Satoh Y, Riahi K, & Forman B (2018). Quantifying the potential for reservoirs to secure future surface water yields in the world's largest river basins. Environmental Research Letters 13 (4): e044026. DOI:10.1088/1748-9326/aab2b5.

Hunt J, Byers E, Prenner R, & de Freitas MAV (2018). Dams with head increaser effect: Harnessing potential and kinetic power from rivers with large head and flow variation. Energy Conversion and Management 157: 549-561. DOI:10.1016/j.enconman.2017.12.034.

Parkinson S, Kahil M, Wada Y, Krey V, Byers E, Johnson N, Burek P, Satoh Y, et al. (2017). Hydro-economic modeling of integrated solutions for the water-energy-land nexus in Africa. In: AGU Fall Meeting, 11-15 December 2015, New Orleans.

Satoh Y, Kahil T, Byers E, Burek P, Fischer G, Tramberend S, Greve P, Flörke M, et al. (2017). Multi-model and multi-scenario assessments of Asian water futures: the Water Futures and Solutions (WFaS) initiative. Earth's Future 5 (7): 823-852. DOI:10.1002/2016EF000503.

Byers E, Gidden M, & Maussion F (2017). Working with big, multi-dimensional geoscientific datasets in Python: a tutorial introduction to xarray. In: European Geosciences Union (EGU) General Assembly 2017, 23–28 April 2017, Vienna, Austria.

Liu L, Parkinson S, Gidden M, Byers E, Satoh Y, Riahi K, & Forman B (2017). Global surface water reservoir storage under climate change, land use constraints, and population growth. In: European Geosciences Union (EGU) General Assembly 2017, 23–28 April 2017, Vienna, Austria.

Gidden M, Byers E, Greve P, Kahil T, Parkinson S, Raptis C, Rogelj J, Satoh Y, et al. (2017). Hydroclimatic risks and uncertainty in the global power sector. In: European Geosciences Union (EGU) General Assembly 2017, 23–28 April 2017, Vienna, Austria.

Greve P, Kahil T, Schinko T, Mochizuki J, Satoh Y, Burek P, Burtscher R, Langan S, et al. (2017). Global assessment of water policy vulnerability under uncertainty in water scarcity projections. In: European Geosciences Union (EGU) General Assembly 2017, 23–28 April 2017, Vienna, Austria.

Wiberg D, Satoh Y, Burek P, Fischer G, Tramberend S, Kahil T, Flörke M, Eisner S, et al. (2017). Water Futures and Solutions: Asia 2050 (Final Report). Knowledge and Innovation Support for the Water Financing Program of the Asian Development Bank (RETA 6498). IIASA, Laxenburg, Austria (Submitted)

Byers E, Hall JW, Amezaga JM, O’Donnell GM, & Leathard A (2016). Water and climate risks to power generation with carbon capture and storage. Environmental Research Letters 11 (2): 024011. DOI:10.1088/1748-9326/11/2/024011.

Byers E, Qadrdan L, Hall J, Amezaga J, Chaudry M, Kilsby C, Martino T, & Alderson D (2016). Water use and water availability constraints to decarbonised electricity systems. In: European Geosciences Union (EGU) General Assembly 2016, 17–22 April 2016, Vienna, Austria.