Rate My Professor Erik Delarue

Erik Delarue is a professor BOF in the Faculty of Engineering Science at KU Leuven, within the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Division of Applied Mechanics and Energy Conversion. He leads the Energy Systems Integration and Modeling research group and holds positions as Vice Director of the Coordinating Group, head of the Division, and head of the Subdivision of the KU Leuven Institute for Energy and Society (KIES). Delarue obtained his MS degree in Mechanical Engineering, specializing in Thermo-technical Energy Sciences, from KU Leuven in 2005, followed by a PhD in Mechanical Engineering in 2009 from the same institution. After his PhD, he served as a post-doctoral researcher at the European University Institute's Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, Florence School of Regulation in Italy from December 2009 to December 2010. He then became a post-doctoral research fellow funded by the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO) at KU Leuven from 2010. Delarue was a visiting researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2008 and 2014, and was appointed assistant professor (BOFZAP) at KU Leuven in October 2015, advancing to professor BOF.

Delarue's research specializes in energy systems modeling, including operational optimization via mixed-integer linear programming for unit commitment, expansion planning models like TIMES, equilibrium models for market interactions, agent-based models for policy impacts, and data-driven approaches. His analyses address energy policy and market design topics such as storage roles, demand-side flexibility, sector coupling of electricity, gas, and heat, EU Emissions Trading System effects, renewable support mechanisms, adequacy assessment, capacity mechanisms, and cross-border balancing. He supervises projects including Accemo on offshore wind impacts, NEPTUNE for North Sea wind energy transition, AMIGDALA for industrial decarbonization modeling, and REINVENT for Belgian sector coupling roadmaps. Key publications encompass "Assessing the need and design of industrial decarbonisation policy beyond carbon pricing" (2026, PhD thesis supervision), "Managing connection queues in distribution networks with flexible connection agreements" (2025, Applied Energy), "Carbon Contracts for Difference Design: Managing carbon price risk in a low-carbon industry" (2025), and "Barriers to efficient carbon pricing: policy risk, myopic behaviour, and financial constraints" (2025).