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.
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 and of Keystone Tower Systems and an advisory board member of Land Life Company. Jules is married to Searl Vetter and has four children.
Boulder, CO
@JulesKortenhors
Jules Kortenhorst’s Downloadable Bio
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That the world is engaged in a profound transition in the way we use energy is undeniable. The era of carbon-intensive energy derived from the burning of fossil fuels is coming to an end, and a cleaner, more reliable energy future based on renewables like wind and solar will be…
This blog post was originally published in Health and Climate Solutions Blog: George Mason University. Rocky Mountain Institute, the nonprofit I lead, has been a part of the community of Colorado’s Roaring Fork Valley since its founding 37 years ago. Our Innovation Center headquarters is there, and the people…
Earlier this week, Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) celebrated the public release of the Poseidon Principles, a pioneering agreement to reduce the carbon emissions of the global maritime shipping sector some 18 months in the making, and the first global agreement among financial institutions to align investments with Paris commitments.
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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,…
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…
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