The Climate-4-CAST project works with cities to develop a Decision Support Tool to calculate carbon emissions and forecast reaching the climate neutrality goals. The consortium of Climate-4-CAST includes 10 partners, among which 6 cities are actively participating in preparing and testing this tool: Tampere, Aarhus, Riga, Östersund, Norderstedt, and Bytom. During the meeting in Östersund on 1-2 October 2024, several associated cities of the project also joined the event to present their best practices in climate budgeting: Bergen, Copenhagen, Turku, and the County of Herzogtum Lauenburg including 5 cities.
Climate budgeting can be applied in cities for different reasons: to support decision-making and political priorities, to communicate the process and inspire the actions, or for reporting obligations. Making the effectiveness of climate actions more transparent is one of the clear needs both in the Baltic Sea Region and in Europe, as the climate neutrality goals set up earlier are approaching for some cities already in 2030.
Climate-4-CAST cities actively exchanged their approaches to climate budgeting during the Östersund meeting, also highlighting how the Climate-4-CAST tool and the related process can support local authorities in other activities. F.ex. in Riga this process is closely connected with the EU Cities Mission and its Climate City Contract, allowing the city prepare data and actions based on the contract’s indicators. In turn, the host of the meeting Östersund plans to apply the tool for the thematic mobility master plan to visualise the effect of different actions.
The consortium meeting also offered a space to identify common bottlenecks in the climate budgeting process, such as uniform data collection, cost-benefit analysis, digitalisation of the climate work, or how to calculate indirect impacts of climate actions.
This feedback shared during the meeting has been carefully noted, as we in the UBC Sustainable Cities Commission progress with preparing the transfer activities for the Climate-4-CAST project. A year from now, our UBC member cities and all other interested municipalities will have an opportunity to build own capacities on climate budgeting, as we will unveil the training course and its related events. Stay tuned!
The Östersund meeting was concluded with an inspiring visit to the new district heating power plant providing 100% renewable energy, operated by Jämtkraft. The company works towards obtaining zero carbon emissions for electricity and heating to contribute the renewable energy needed for a sustainable society.
