As a result, we built ClimateView—the world’s first Model-as-a-Service (MaaS) designed to help cities plan, understand, and visualize the shifts necessary to address the urgent climate crisis
We knew that traditional methods wouldn’t cut it: that no amount of satellite images or sensors would get us started on this urgent problem as quickly as software—alongside proper methodologies—could cut through all of the complexity and show our cities a clearer view on how to achieve their goals.
ClimateView was born in 2018 as the Panorama Project for the nation of Sweden (and adopted as a budget priority for the entire country in 2020). Since then, we’ve been featured in FastCompany, expanded throughout Europe, and attracted some of the world’s most influential investors and organizations..
In May 2020, we formally introduced Transition Targets®—software encapsulations of over 95 “shifts” that are essential and universal to addressing climate change—and began to make them available to leading scientists, academics, and NGO’s. Each Transition Target contains leading indicators, calculations, validations, and best practices necessary to achieve specific, meaningful carbon abatement results. This effort is part of the Transition Project,™ a full-blown Open Data Initiative (ODI) which is curated by the world’s brightest researchers on climate change.*
But we didn’t stop there. In September of 2020, after kicking off over a dozen pilot programs across Sweden, the United Kingdom, and Germany, we were ready to introduce the MaaS concept to accelerate carbon avoidance for more cities.
The ClimateView Model was solidified, which breaks down the carbon challenge into 7 key stages:
- The Global Mission: The Paris Climate Agreement to prevent the world from warming above 2℃ over pre-industrial levels.
- The Local Goal: A commitment at the city level to curb local GHG to support the global mission.
- Perspectives: Bundles of Transition Targets that allow you see how entire cross-sectors of a city’s total carbon output are affected by shifting the Transition Targets.
- Transition Targets: 95 leading indicators, enablers, calculations, validations, and best practices which must be shifted to reach the optimal path toward reaching your local abatement goal.
- Endeavors: Bundles of Actions that provide reasonable confidence that the Actions proposed will lead to a meaningful shift in the corresponding Transition Target.
- Actions: The specific policies, ads, legislation (etc.) necessary to drive Endeavors.
- Steps: The order in which Actions should be taken to maximize their impacts.
Then we had to go beyond the standard GHG-amount-over-time abatement curve—and pull in financial costs and co-benefits (like health) into the same model—to present an ingenious picture of the challenge ahead. As we did, three things became clear:
- It’s not just about shifting from a “BAU” (business-as-usual) to “Desired State” in terms of carbon output—it’s about shifting our entire economies in short-term achievable and long-term sustainable ways;
- The costs of inaction are great—and often ignored; and
- There was no way spreadsheets were going to cut it.
So is ClimateView software? Is it a methodology? Yes and yes—we’ve brought them together for in a unique, complete model for rapid carbon abatement. By combining SaaS and validated methods for solving for climate change, we invented the MaaS for climate—one that gets better and stronger with each new data point, across all participating cities, every day.
One simple mantra drives everything we do: transparency. We believe that the world’s carbon challenge can only be addressed if leaders are honest with citizens—and stakeholders are truthful with each other—about the dire state of today’s GHG emissions, and how the steep the climb ahead truly is. We are also certain that with the right software tools, methodologies, and implementations—these goals are reachable and the mission can be achieved.
Your journey began with recognition of the problem—and has hopefully continued with political support. The next step is the ClimateView blueprint—which contains a series of suggested Transition Targets—that can serve either as the foundation for a strong plan or a catalyst for achieving your goal where spreadsheets have likely failed. So wherever you find yourself on your climate journey, we’re here to encourage you to take the next step, reach the summit, and approach the landscape ahead with clarity and confidence.
