Overcoming the stagnation of climate action in cities is a matter of adopting better digital planning systems. Tomer Shalit reports
Cities have come a long way since the Paris Agreement in 2015. The number disclosing their emissions has more than doubled, totalling 812 in 2020 – yet 51% of these had no climate action plan in place in 2020, only 18% had set targets aligned with 1.5°C, and just 6% had interim targets, attesting to the meager state of climate planning.
And while “cities are where the climate battle will largely be won or lost,” as UN Secretary General António Guterres said before COP26, there is still no systematic and straightforward way for them to easily build effective climate plans.
Analysis paralysis
Climate work is crippled by complexity. City economies are intricate systems and while we know what they need to reduce emissions – increased numbers of journeys on foot or by bicycle, for instance – multiple such shifts need
to operate all at once. There is also the question of how much needs to shift, and the fact that cities are financially and operationally constrained. This makes ‘analysis paralysis’ a predicament for climate teams in cities.
Disjointed solutions
Spreadsheets are the main tool cities use to plan transitions. They are hard to update, scattered, and lack the interoperability necessary to plan in a way that connects emissions to targets, targets to actions and actions to the finance needed to implement the transition. They also lack the essential visual and operational means to manage and bring together multiple stakeholders, maintaining instead a siloed order.
The future is digital
New digital tools have a role to play in sorting through the complexity and streamlining processes of climate work.
With ClimateOS, the world’s first climate operating system from ClimateView, cities can manage complex systems in one integrated, collaborative platform. All the data, technical and social interdependencies are available at a glance, providing meaningful insights into the transition while easing and accelerating the decision-making process for climate strategists and stakeholders.
By using a simple graphical interface, powered by complex mathematical models, climate strategists now get a bird’s-eye view of all their emissions, the limits and potentials of different policy levers, and how actions to reduce emissions would transition to a zero-carbon economy. Not only does it help with understanding emissions, building strategy and creating science-based targets, it also enables collaboration and greater transparency, while significantly cutting workload and accelerating transition implementation.
Part of becoming a smart city involves digitising climate work and building interoperability and flexibility at the core of processes – as understood by our partners Microsoft and CDP.
Intelligent systems
The benefit of solutions such as ClimateOS is that as the user base scales, the reasoning, data and assumptions, and policies and implementation improve. More than a means to manage the transition in one city, a digital platform such as ClimateOS provides a solution to accelerate the transition by building collaborative intelligence globally.
Tomer Shalit is founder and CPO of ClimateView.
