Vasileios Rizos is a Senior Research Fellow, heading the Energy, Resources and Climate Change Unit and he is also Head of Sustainable Resources and Circular Economy at CEPS.
Vasileios’s primary research areas include policies and conditions for achieving a resource-efficient and low-carbon economy, green value chains, analysis of market and regulatory barriers for implementing circular economy business models and resource efficiency indicators. Trained as an ecological economist, he has developed interdisciplinary expertise on integrated policies for industrial sustainability, green business innovation and interlinkages between economic, environmental and social systems. Vasileios has led the CEPS work in various projects on inter alia sustainable consumption and production policies, eco-innovation practices, linkages between circular economy and industrial decarbonisation, environmental economic instruments, impacts of the green transition and sustainability practices in the fast-moving consumer goods, electronics, battery and plastics industries.
Between 2016 and 2018, Vasileios was the coordinator of the CEPS Task Force on the Role of Business in the Circular Economy that brought together executives from major multinational companies as well as representatives of NGOs and research institutes. He was also co-chair of the Circular Economy Task Force of the Think20 (T20) network that supported G20 activities under the German presidency 2016-17. He is the author of several studies, policy papers, peer-reviewed publications and book chapters. He has also been invited for giving various keynotes speeches, presentations, seminars and university lecturers.
Prior to joining CEPS Vasileios acquired experience and gained insights at both the EU institutions and the European industry. Specifically, he first joined as a trainee the DG Environment of the European Commission where he worked on the implementation of the EU waste legislation. He then became a Project Officer at the Confederation of European Paper Industries (CEPI) where he dealt with producer responsibility schemes across the EU and green business models for the industry.
