Professor Kornelis Blok receives Royal Honours

Kornelis Blok, Chair of the TU Delft Energy Initiative (DEI), and Professor of Energy Systems Analysis at the Faculty of Technology, Management and Policy (TPM) was made a Knight of the Order of the Netherlands Lion.

Professor Blok has dedicated his career to solving energy and climate issues and realising a sustainable energy supply. Before becoming Professor of Energy Systems Analysis at TU Delft in 2015, he was a Professor of Renewable Energy at Utrecht University for many years. In 1984, he co-founded and later became scientific director of Ecofys, a company he helped build into a leading international consultancy in the field of energy and climate. With Ecofys, he won the 2008 Erasmus Prize for the most innovative company in the Netherlands.

Blok plays an important role in the development of national and international climate policy. He was lead author of several reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which form the basis for the UN climate negotiations. The IPCC was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. He is also chairman of the Netherlands Energy Research Alliance (NERA), and chairman of the scientific advisory board of independent information centre Milieu Centraal. As director of the Delft Energy Initiative, and previously of the TU Delft Urban Energy Institute, he is closely involved in linking education and research and in disseminating research results to society. This year, as chairman of the TU Delft lustrum committee, he is also committed to ‘speeding up the energy transition’, the theme of the celebrations.

Blok studied physics at Utrecht University, where he obtained his doctorate in 1991 for research into reducing CO2 emissions. A focal points of his research is energy saving, which he named as the ‘neglected side of the energy system’ during his inaugural speech in 2015. His academic body of work includes many scientific publications, including two peer-reviewed articles in Nature Climate Change. In addition to his impactful professional contributions to science and society, he is also a very active and committed member of his local (church) community.