Between 1990 and 2013 Bert de Vries has been a senior scientist at the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL, formerly MNP and RIVM). He has been a member of the TARGETS- and IMAGE-teams on Global Change Integrated Assessment Models (IAM) and has contributed to modelling and scenario construction for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Between 2003 and 2013 he was Professor of Global Change and Energy at Utrecht University. His research expertise and publications are in resource and energy analysis, modelling and policy; climate and global change modelling; and complex systems modelling for sustainable development. As member of the Sustainable Finance Lab he is engaged in research on the relationship between sustainability and the financial system.

He has co-edited several books, including Perspectives on Global Change: The TARGETS Approach (1997, Cambridge University Press) and Mappae Mundi: Humans and their Habitats in a Long-Term Socio-Ecological Perspective (2002, Amsterdam University Press). In december 2012, he published the textbook Sustainability Science, based on ten years of teaching and coordinating the course Sustainable Development - An Integrated Perspective. In 2023 a new, second edition of the textbook Sustainabilty Science has been published. Its content, chapter summaries and supporting  blogs can be accessed at www.sustainabilityscience.eu.

Focus in research, in collaboration with STS-colleagues and colleagues at the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL):

• Integrated Assessment modelling of Global Change and Sustainable Development issues, with policy applications 
• Modelling of energy system developments: demand side, converskion technologies, supply dynamics, system simulation 
• Complex systems analysis: common pool resource (CPR) management, agent-based model (ABM) simulations.

Within our group we investigate possibilities for scientific knowledge and technology to contribute to sustainable development of society. We focus on ‘energy and the environment’, taking into account issues like land use changes and impacts on biodiversity, and how to deal with risks and uncertainties.

Subjects investigated include: energy and climate change, energy and economic development, energy for sustainable development, energy and material efficiency improvement, renewable energy potential assessment and technology development (biomass energy, solar-PV and wind energy), land use and biodiversity, capture and storage of CO2 (CCS), nuclear energy, risk management, uncertainty analysis, energy modeling, energy policy analysis, energy system innovation studies.

• Website around the textbook Sustainability Science (Cambridge University Press 2013), with chapter summaries and blogs