Jules Kortenhorst is the Chief Executive Officer of Rocky Mountain Institute. He is a recognized leader on global energy issues and climate change. His background spans business, government, entrepreneurial, and nonprofit leadership.
Since 1982, Rocky Mountain Institute has advanced market-based solutions that transform global energy use to create a clean, prosperous and secure future. An independent, nonprofit think-and-do tank, RMI engages with businesses, communities and institutions to accelerate and scale replicable solutions that drive the cost-effective shift from fossil fuels to efficiency and renewables.
BACKGROUND
Prior to RMI, Jules was the founding CEO of the European Climate Foundation, the largest philanthropic organization dedicated to policy development and advocacy on climate change in Europe. Before launching ECF, he served as a member of the Dutch parliament for the Christian Democratic Party.
During the first 20 years of his career, Jules worked in the business world. He was the CEO for International Operations of ClientLogic Corporation, a global leader in outsourced customer relationship management (CRM) solutions. He worked for almost 10 years for Royal Dutch/Shell, among others as managing director of Shell Bulgaria, and he began his career as an analyst at McKinsey & Co.
Jules currently serves on the Energy Transition Commission, and is the co-chair of the WEF Future Council on Energy. He also is a non-executive board member of the Energy Web Foundation, Stedin Holding NV., and of Keystone Tower Systems and an advisory board member of Land Life Company. Jules is married to Searl Vetter and has four children.
EDUCATION
- Masters of Business Administration, Harvard Business School, Baker Scholar
- Masters in Economics, Erasmus University, Netherlands
LOCATION
Boulder, CO
TWITTER HANDLE
@JulesKortenhors
Jules Kortenhorst’s Downloadable Bio
Jules Kortenhorst’s Downloadable Picture
Authored Works
Outlet Blog Post
Originally posted at weforum.org here. Coordinated public-sector support once kick-started the technologies, business practices, and markets needed for a clean, prosperous, and secure low-carbon energy future. Over time, the increasing profitability of clean energy activity has come to drive exponential growth in global annual investment—amounting to more than $333 billion…
Outlet Blog Post
The U.S. Energy Information Administration’s (EIA’s) most recent Annual Energy Outlook (AEO) should give anyone watching today’s energy markets a jolt of surprise. Not for projecting that U.S. energy demand will grow by an average of 0.4 percent per year after two decades of evidence to the contrary. Not…
Outlet Blog Post
Yesterday, the U.S. government presented a new challenge for the clean energy industry. The confused logic of the solar PV import tariff challenges all reason: intended to boost the domestic manufacturing of cells and modules—which currently employs less than 38,000 people—and add some jobs while reducing imports, the tariff also…
Outlet Blog Post
Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) has long focused on ways to help companies and consumers transition to a cleaner and more prosperous energy future. A new collaboration will help us achieve this mission faster. Today, we’re thrilled to announce that RMI has formally incorporated WattTime—a Silicon-Valley based nonprofit…
Outlet Blog Post
Friends, We are greatly disappointed in President Trump’s decision to pull the United States out of the Paris Climate Agreement. The Paris Agreement constitutes humanity’s best effort to put a global governance mechanism in place to address the global climate change threat. It is and will remain an unprecedented achievement…
Outlet Blog Post
While the U.S. administration continues to surprise the world by focusing on bringing back coal, elsewhere in the world momentum toward a low-carbon energy system continues to build. Nowhere was this more obvious than this week in New York where, in the margins of the Bloomberg New Energy Finance Summit,…
Outlet Blog Post
In May of 2011, Rocky Mountain Institute cofounder Amory Lovins started his commencement address at the College of Natural Resources, University of California at Berkeley, talking about applied hope. “Many of us here stir and strive in the spirit of applied hope,” Amory said. “We work to make the…
Outlet Blog Post
Cleantech companies and investors are now a large global force, creating jobs and wealth. What if they had a platform where they could network and promote innovation? What if there was a way to link all the cleantech start-ups, nonprofits, corporates, investors, venture capitalists, and the public sector? We would…
Outlet Blog Post
The Risky Business Project, founded by co-chairs Michael R. Bloomberg, Hank Paulson, and Tom Steyer, has shifted its focus from analyzing the risks—which are increasingly being realized as costs—of climate change to the tremendous opportunity that reducing these risks presents to the U.S. economy.
Outlet Blog Post
This week we all woke up to a new and different political reality for the United States and the world. RMI CEO Jules Kortenhorst describes how our work has endured through decades of various administrations because it's the right thing to do environmentally and economically.
