Rate My Professor Steven Van Passel

Steven Van Passel is a full research professor of Environmental Economics in the Department of Engineering Management, Faculty of Business and Economics, University of Antwerp, where he coordinates the EnvEcon research team. Since 2023, he has served as Vice-Rector for Valorisation and Development. He obtained his PhD in 2007 from Ghent University with the thesis 'Sustainability performance of farms: An efficiency approach' and a Master in Economics in 2005 with great distinction from KU Leuven. His professional career began as a scientific researcher in Agricultural Economics at the Policy Research Centre for Sustainable Agriculture, Ghent University and KU Leuven (2002-2006), followed by roles at the Institute for Agricultural and Fisheries Research (2007), postdoctoral positions at the Centre for Environmental Sciences, Hasselt University (2007-2011), and Department of Bioscience Engineering, University of Antwerp (2009-2012). He advanced to Assistant Professor at Hasselt University (2011-2015), Associate Professor at the University of Antwerp Faculty of Business and Economics (2015-2017), full Professor (2018-present), and Research Professor (2022-present). Additional roles include Senior Advisor for Energy, Climate, and Agriculture at the Flemish Government (2014-2019) and visiting fellowships at Yale University (2012), Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (2013), and University of Waterloo (2018).

Van Passel's research specializes in economic and sustainability assessments of clean technologies, agricultural systems, energy solutions, and ecosystem services, with applications in Western Europe and low- and middle-income countries. Key areas include farm sustainability and efficiency, agricultural responses to climate change, hybrid energy systems, microgrids, life cycle analyses of technologies like organic photovoltaics and plasma gasification, enhanced landfill mining, and plastic recycling policies. He utilizes methods such as environmental valuation techniques (hedonic pricing, Ricardian method, discrete choice modeling), techno-economic assessments, life cycle costing, life cycle analysis, cost-benefit analysis, and multi-criteria decision analysis. With approximately 14,800 citations, his influential publications include 'Techno-economic and policy insights from a cross-country assessment for plastics recycling' (2026, Journal of Environmental Management), 'Prospective water scarcity footprint under climate change applied to bio-based sustainable aviation fuel production pathways' (2026, iScience), 'Behavioral insights into distributed energy flexibility: evidence from discrete choice experiments' (2026), and 'Urban green infrastructure: a review on valuation toolkits from an ecosystem services perspective' (2020). He has supervised 32 PhDs to completion, contributing significantly to the field.