ClimateView: We decarbonize city economies

We have a platform that helps cities with their entire climate action planning and execution. So we help them set the goals and make sure they're aligned with the Paris Agreement, build their strategy and then enable execution by assessing their actions, what kind of impact they can make and very importantly start beginning to assess their financial pros and cons of the transition. Welcome to this special English edition of der Gorsche Neustadt, a German podcast series by Zabila Barton, in which she talks to pioneering leaders who inspired by the World Economic Forum's great reset initiative are committed to making our world smarter, greener and fairer. Today I welcome Thomas Schalit, CEO and founder of Climateview and his community director for German-speaking countries, Michael Berggrüff. Climateview created the world's first platform to support climate decision-making across entire city economies. Based in Stockholm, their technology enables local governments to understand and monitor their emissions, choose the best pathway to net zero and collaborate at scale to implement a comprehensive transition plan. Why is this important? More than half of the global population are urban and generate more than 70% of global energy-related emissions. Only recently said the UN's General Secretary Antonio Guterres, cities are where the climate battle will largely be won or lost. Climateview operates today in 170 cities across the world, 50 cities alone in Germany, and it's been named one of the most innovative companies in 2021. Welcome, Thomas and Michael, Sweden. Let's begin with you, Thomas, to create a platform that is able to identify the most cost-effective route to decarbonise city economies. What does it actually mean? Well, we have a platform that helps cities with their entire climate action planning and execution. So we help them set the goals and make sure they're aligned with the Paris Agreement, build their strategy, and then enable execution by assessing their actions, what kind of impact they can make, and very importantly start beginning to assess the financial pros and cons of the transition. Thomas, let's imagine I'm a client and I want a little more detail. So you're a client, you come and start using the platform, and one of the first things you're going to say is, oh, but we need lots of data. We have to understand the city's current baseline, and then we'll say, fine, that's good. We will start with providing you your baseline of all your city's activity. We do that through different models of where we take national statistics, we scale it down, so we give you a good starting point and assumption of your current baseline for your city. Then we provide you with transition elements, which are kind of like building blocks for your strategy, where every transition element is a model, a KPI, that describes one kind of transition. So now let me take a step back. In the future city, the one we want to build, the one we want to create, we still want to live in comfortable, well-tempered houses, we want to travel to work, we want to eat nourishing food. What we need to do is shift the mechanisms with which we fulfill these needs. So we still want to go to work. We want, instead of taking, until combustion engines, we want to cycle or have EVs or walk and cycle or use remote working. We still want to live in well-tempered homes. We want to shift the way in which we heat them or cool them or how efficient we make those buildings. We want to eat nourishing food, but we want to go from a plant-based, from a meat-based diet to a higher degree of plant-based diet. So I'm saying all these things. We know about cities and the great thing is that these patterns are very similar across different cities. They have the same kind of challenges and they have the same kind of transition opportunities because each one of these shifts I described is an opportunity for the transition. So I'm going back to, you asked me, what does one do? Well, I said you get the baseline, but then you get a collection of more than 100 transition elements, each one of them describing one of these transitions and the opportunity it gives and the costs and the co-benefits and the behavioural drivers needed to create that transition. So you palette of strategy components, strategic building blocks to build your climate action plan. And with that, we have saved a lot of time for cities because the great thing is cities are very similar. So these building blocks that we have built now over several years can be shared between different cities. So if you get going, you come and you start using our software, we give you first the baseline assumptions of where, what carbon driving activity does your city have today? Then we give you this palette, these hundreds of transition elements, which you combine to build your climate strategy. And then you start, then we give you tools to start adding projects and actions to help you fulfil your strategy and connect them to your strategy. So you can start assessing if you're doing enough to reach your strategy. And you go on. Yes, it's absolutely fascinating. You do the full package, don't you? You give us a tool, you analyse it and you help in the transformation. Is that right? Yeah, exactly. I think it's a very important thing that it is the full package because traditionally all many of these things have been done well before, but they've been spread out, there's spreadsheets over here, there's some kind of emission inventory over there, and there's lots of good government and other material and different kind of transitions. All of these things exist today, but they're spread across many different tools and many different places. So we are bringing together our platform where all of these things are integrated with each other. So you have one place where you can do everything. And from what I understood, this platform shows me categories like transport, buildings, what's going on there. Is that correct? Yes, so these transition elements I spoke about, which are these building blocks, they come in different sort of piles. We have a picture of a periodic table, which might be a good image to have in the head. So when it comes to say mobility, there's a number of transition elements, which are strategic building blocks for your mobility. When it comes to building, there's a number of transition elements. And when it comes to energy supply, which is of course, very, very key, there's not a number of different transition elements that describe the shifts needed in our energy supply. You were talking about these complex activities. So a city has a thousand, thousands of complex activities. The amount of data, how do you break it down? So in several ways. So first of all, when it comes to understanding the, we say, the carbon driving activity in the city, that is the kilometers being driven, the square meters being heated, the square meters being built, etc. Those we break down according actually to standards that exist out there, something called the GPC protocol, the other different standards we fulfill the different standards. And that breaks down the activities into what we call carbon causal change. The kilometers being driven and the carbon emissions and other emissions they cause. So that's following standards when it comes to describing the current picture of the base of the baseline. And then we have the transitions. And that's where these transition elements come into pieces. So each one of them is like a imagine a box and in which it describes, say shift, they'll take a simple one shift from cars to cycles. Now that by itself contains lots of data. It contains the understanding of what are the emissions from cars and what are the emissions from cycles. Well, a lot less. What will the benefit being of shifting those kilometers from cars to bicycles? What is the average commuting trip by car and by bicycle? What kind of behavioral drivers do we need to make people make the choice to take the bicycle in the morning instead of the car, etc. So each one of these, the way to handle this massive amount of data is, as always, modularity. And the modularity here comes from these transition elements, which each one of them contains then a large set of data. But you can, you want to sort of be able to peel it as an onion, look at the element as a big block, and then you open it up and there's more data and you open up a small box and that and even more data. Michael, before we come to you, I have just one more question for Toma, because you were saying that's how we want to make people change their behavior. So how do you make people change their behavior? That's a very good question, because that's so much such an important part of the transition. So we can actually see that the transition is about changing behavior in a sense, in a sense, like I'll go back to the same simple example, to make people go switch to bicycle, they are actually making a large amount of decisions. They're how comfortable is it? How do I feel safe when I cycle to work? If I don't feel safe, I'm not going to cycle at all. How much extra time do I add to the distance? What's the, how do people socially look at cycling to work instead of taking the car, etc. So there's a number of behavioral drivers, which actually, again, actually pretty well mapped. It's not that we need to invent these, these exist, lots of really good research and reports describe these behavioral drivers. What we have done is inserted them into these transition elements in a clear, in a clear model where we, where these things are well, well defined. So for every single shift, you can define a number of behavioral drivers and to be really sort of see the pattern really clear. It's always about behavioral shifts, even if it's like cycling, that's a new decision that you need to make every day. But if I am a, have a district heating station, I'm going to decide on spending billions on us, some kind of CCS. It's still a question of what are the underlying, what are behavioral drivers for me to make that decision in that investment? Obviously, they'll obviously much more rational decisions, but it's still a set of behavioral drivers for that decision maker to make that investment in carbon capture or whatever they choose. Michael, over to you. You are in charge of the entire German speaking market. And I noticed that in Germany alone, you operate in 50 cities. How come? Thanks, Seville. But maybe just to finish the point of Tomer, of course, there is not only one solution. So I think that that is actually also something that really works well in Germany and other places as well. So I mean, we now took the example of biking, but of course, it's always, there are several transitions that need to happen. And what our tool does is telling a city what is technically possible, but then of course, then come the political priorities and what is socially acceptable. And maybe in some places, biking is really the city of Heidelberg or Freiburg, maybe some university cities in Germany. Biking is very popular, where in other places, not far away, there's still a very strong car culture. So maybe the shift to electric vehicles or other motor transport are more popular and the city can really set their priorities and really choose their optimal pathway to net zero. So just to finish off that and transition over to the point, why is it going so well in Germany? It is because there is a long tradition of tapping black and change at the local level. I mean, some cities have started working with it in the 90s and Germany is a federal state, so cities have a lot of power and responsibility. And then of course, 2019 happened, Fridays for Future, the city of Heidelberg, Luisa Neubauer, the civil society finally woke up and put a lot of pressure on the politicians. And what we're seeing now, of course, so this is now three years back, like always political process are slow, but we're now seeing kind of the trickle down effect of that. So from the streets to the elections, since then many local elections have taken place, power, let's say the maturities are shifting towards the climate or the climate issue is very prominent nowadays. And of course, in the end, it goes down into the budgets. And we noticed that on a daily basis. So the climate office received much more support these days and the civil society has woken up. I mean, there is, well, I mentioned Fridays for Future, but for example, there's also Chairman Zero, which is a grassroots organization which provokes a lot of local initiatives, so well in German called Bürgerenscheides, that city's race to ambition set clear targets 2030, 2035, according to Paris Supreme, we all know that's probably even too late for the 1.5 zero, 1.5 degree target, but nevertheless, cities feel the pressure from the street and also now, you need to achieve progress fast, to be more transparent in their approach, include relevant stakeholders, and that's where we really can help them with our decision making platform for the entire city organization. Michael, can you take us perhaps with a bit more detail through a city's successful transformation in a way that our listeners understand exactly what to expect when they approach you? Let me take the example of Heidelberg, where of course they have a very active civil society, it's a university town. They have, yeah, they're a little bit pressured by civil society and other stakeholders, say, guys, do you know, the clock is ticking, we need to be carbon neutral very, very soon. So they came to us and say, well, we have that idea that they put a visit down, basically a watch on the city hall saying like, how much time is remaining till our carbon budget is running out? And of course the city then said, well, we can do that, but it's not a very positive message, it looks like we're doomed in two years. Let's try to turn it down and have something more constructive and that's where they turned to us and say, well, maybe actually the dashboard that we're offering could help everybody to see the solution. So when they approach us, we try to answer the following questions, where are we now? What are our missions and where do they come from? So we have them answer first, so where are they today? Then where are we going? What is our goal? What are the sub targets? What is the pathway that makes most sense for the city? Again, balancing out the different interests, some put more emphasis on biking, some others are more on electric cars, some don't need to decarbonize the district heating system, it's already taking place, some others really need to get rid of the coal or the gas heated energy or gas generated energy in the system. So there are really different potentials that they can start working with. And of course, what do we need to do concretely? What actions have the biggest potential, addressing the emissions from this sector? What actions drive behavior change? We talked about that. And how do we get the buy-in? How do we communicate our plan? So it's not just came off the top with another city in the Hamburg region. How do we make this a collaborative effort? We sometimes jokingly say, well, this is like a big group exercise, like back in the days in school, you put together a random group and of course you have the nerds, you have the cool people and you have also the slackers and in the city it's very similar. And in the end, you need to make everybody aligned or at least push into the right direction or in the same direction. And of course, and then also what is very important for terms, measure progress, monitoring, how do we... And they're also a little bit... We try to tell them, well, the inventories that you do, they are tedious, they're hard to understand, you can don't break them down into concrete, at the very concrete level. So we were working with leading indicators and what can be done to close these gaps. So that's what... Let's say those are the questions we try to help them answer when they approach us. Back to Toma. When local governments come to you, do they come always with a clear target or are they rary? And I'm asking that because you highlight on your site, Newcastle in the UK and they seem to be very clear and driven to reach net zero by 2030. Is that the normal case? Mostly, I would say obviously the cities that we started working with in the beginning of were obviously the most ambitious ones. So most cities have some kind of target, but not always. Sometimes we have to help them assess and find a good target, but I would say most cities have a clear target. And Michael was mentioning they have a dashboard. So how do I imagine the dashboard in the mayor's office? How does it look like? Imagine it's an interactive climate action plan. So that you at the top level, you see the current emissions and how we're going and you see the projections aware where you want the emissions to head. And then you start double clicking and you dive into more and more detail till you come to each one of these transition elements, each one of these transition opportunities. And then you get a detailed breakdown saying we want to shift this many vehicles to EVs or this many vehicles to cycling or retrofit this many buildings, etc. So the very concrete physical change of the cities. And you see the effects of those and you see all the actions in place to try and achieve these goals, these targets. And you also see the target attainment, how well you are reaching those targets. So it's an interactive dashboard where you get the big picture, but then you can, as interactivity lets you double click all the way down to nitty gritty details and then zoom up. Yeah, so you're basically aware all the time of the current status? Yes, you're aware of the current status and aware of where you should be heading and where the end goal is. That's more a question now for both of you. In your experience over the last few years, what has been the biggest CO2 contramuter? If a city has a big local industry, like you can have a small city which is supplying the entire nation with steel, in the example where I'm from, then of course that's the far biggest one. But if you remove those sort of national interests that are local, so to speak, then because they will obviously go over the top, but then it's nearly always, it's transport and building. It's about 30% of transportation and other 30% is building. One issue we see coming more and more is obviously the indirect emissions, the scope free and the consumption emission, consumption based emissions. Because that's also a little bit of a funny thing. Well, Tomer, you can talk about Sweden that's moving exactly as an entire nation into that direction. But in Germany at the moment, the greenhouse gas inventories are not taking into account any of those imported emissions and they're not taking into account even the industry emissions sometimes. So in a way, we're working with a very incomplete picture. In our tool, of course, you can assess all your emissions. So we're not very prescriptive, but just to say, so this is now a topic we're seeing more and more because some cities, there is just not much left. Well, of course, there's a lot of left to reduce in mobility and stationary energy. But if we start to take into account indirect emissions, the consumption based emissions, the picture looks again very different. And then we create a lot of spillover effects from our consumption patterns. So that is one thing. And also, another thing that we're seeing more and more also in German cities, that's also elsewhere is to combine climate mitigation with adaptation and also looking at co-benefits between those kind of distinct but still interrelated disciplines to make cities greener. Tomer said at the beginning, we want to have livable cities, great cities to live in. And of course, that's a combination of contributing to the overall climate challenge or climate crisis or finding solutions to mitigate CO2. But of course, also yeah, make it a livable place in the summer, for example. And then the Asphalt square is definitely not a good idea in that respect. So cities are also working more and more on making their cities greener and also adjust to the floods and everything. There's the strong weather events that are coming our way and more and more. I'd like to give you a question there on the biggest emissions from cities and then starting to look outside the territory, so to speak. And like, yeah, the consumption based emissions. The very interesting thing is that cities actually have a lot of control over some of them. They might not be able to directly tell their citizens what to eat, but for example, cement is really is where a city is probably for many cities where they have absolutely biggest control over like how to choose to build. And it's not today calculated in their emissions inventory, because it's outside the cement is made somewhere else. So that's one of those examples where really looking at consumption based emission makes practical and moral sense and is very much under the city's actual remit of what they can do a lot about. And when I ask you the question before you immediately went into where the transformation works best. So where does the transformation works best? In getting rid of the emissions. Yeah, so I guess there's several answers. Everyone wants the silver bullet answer this. And of course, the big challenge here, there isn't a answer. We actually have in many ways going from centralized solutions to decentralized, but there are some easy wins, which many as in the transport, the transport sector, which is beginning to happen quite fast with electrification and where technology seems to be catching up. There's a lot of things that can be done in building, but where we have chokes in the form of how much retrofitting etc can be done. I just see now in Germany, for example, it seems like heat pumps is like beginning to pick up properly. But no, there isn't a silver bullet. It's a question of using less energy, using energy more efficient and then making sure we change where our energy is coming from. So no, there isn't that one big bullet. I mean, the reason people love talking about electrification is because that is a big one, which is kind of easy to imagine. And yes, that's all drive electric vehicles. It doesn't feel like a big difference. But we also know we can't all drive electric vehicles. And that's not the silver bullet. We need to drive less as well. Just briefly, if you, okay, you have your dashboard there, everything is in place, and suddenly the results come up. And what is if local government does not know how to deal with it? How much outside intellectual support do they need? And how much can you do? I think we can do most by connecting cities to each other. It goes back to where we started, that cities challenges are very similar. And by having a common language on how to address these these transitions, the common language is about these traditional elements about behavioral drivers that we all share about the models that we all share. So the best way is, is helping cities work together and get their help from each other, because every city is a specialist in one thing, at least. And here I can add an example from Sweden, where actually one of our very early cities, Umeå and Eskilstuna, not not because cities in the world, but the climate front runners, they have actually granted each other access to their board. So each one can see what the other is doing, and of course, learning and discussing, and they are not reinventing the wheel every time. That's a little bit some, because that's actually sometimes what we see, what's holding cities back, they try to reinvent the wheel or just to copy paste without the proper discussion from other cities, because you need to adjust it local to local circumstances. And our platform always helps, but it's like, you have an iPhone, I have an iPhone, I don't know how to use that app that you have. Yeah, I can ask you for advice, because we're running on the same operating system. Thanks, Michael. Toma, what we haven't done is we haven't talked much about your technology in detail yet, but I'm quite curious about, have you developed it all by yourself? How does it look like? What makes it special? So first, I think most, when we say a web-based tool, I think most people have some kind of, if nothing else, outlook in the cloud or something like that. So having a tool that you're using in the web browser to plan that, I think that's clear. Now, then what's special here is the underlying models, what we call an agent-based model. So we've talked about these transition elements. Now we can look at each one of these transitions. Now, the thing is, of course, it's a really systemic problem. Everything is interconnected. If we shift to electric vehicles, obviously the way we change the energy mix is going to make that shift look very different. If we shift buildings to district heating, it depends very much on what kind of district heating we're provided. So every single one of these transitions is interconnected with others. And that is where that becomes, calculation-wise, can become a massively complex problem. That's where big Excel spreadsheets will not hold it. So what we have developed is a model where you can define every transition element as a building block by itself. But that's not that hard. But then they start working with each other. And so when one changes, there's knock-on and lock-in effects, they all start interacting with each other. The user doesn't have to take that into consideration. So instead, they get what-if scenario planning. They pull in one lever and they see what happens elsewhere. They pull in another and see what happens elsewhere. And that's when you can get aha moments, where you understand how things interconnect. And actually, just the understanding, just being able to manipulate the complex system and pulling the levers, gives a deeper understanding of how the system works, a systemic understanding. And I think that is really important all across all stakeholders. So the politicians understand. So the civil... Yeah, so everyone involved actually understands the system. Toma, I would very much like to pick up on your thing that every transition is interconnected and the complexity of systems and that we all need to understand it. By 2050, we have over two thirds of the world's population. They are set to live in cities. So changes need to happen now to reduce emissions and deliver resilient urban ecosystems. If we move from transforming towns and cities now to the transformation of the world's 33 mega cities like Tokyo, mega cities are cities with more than 10 million people. Tokyo, for example, as a metropolitan region is home to 38 million people. So how would you approach it? And does your technology work here as effectively and efficiently as it would work in Stockholm? So actually, the interesting... We're beginning to have some experience of this. And the interesting thing is it's actually pretty similar. So even these mega cities, well, they are divided into sub-cities, et cetera. And at that level, the challenges, the transitions are about the same. Then obviously, the public transport where people live very densely is much more efficient. And you obviously have a higher proportion. But there's actually not that much of a difference in how you approach it. There's more people involved, there's more data, but the core approach is exactly the same. So basically, me, the mayor of Tokyo, can also come to you and use your technology. Yes. That is fascinating. Really, it is. And you're also now dealing... So coming from cities and towns to mega cities, you're also working with the government of Sweden to turn the entire country into a what? Net zero economy? Yes, actually, net zero economy by 2045. Sweden is using the term the first net zero welfare economy. When I read about you, that was also your first client, wasn't it? Yes. So a lot of this underlying technology and framework with transition elements, we developed with the Swedish Climate Policy Council Energy Agency and the Environmental Protection Agency. So actually, so going back to your question, but it was in the beginning, we said, let's build a dashboard for Sweden's transition. That was the starting point. Following the idea that if we all have a shared common picture of where we are, where we want to go, what's going on, we will have a better ability to start aligning all the different stakeholders towards that common goal. What we also haven't talked about yet is how do you finance your work? And that's a question for you, Toma, and also Michael, as let's go back to your Heidelberg example, how much does it cost me, the city of Heidelberg? So the cost obviously differs on the size of the city, but also how much handholding or also port the city needs. But let's say from small to bigger cities, we were talking about between 10,000 to 50,000, 60,000 euros a year, including obviously with a lot of support. So we take the service part of the software as a service, so we take the service part also very seriously, because in the end it's a human-centered business. We provide technology, but of course it's humans that have to make the decisions collaboratively and we support them in that. But this is about the price range, typically for a city. So we have a package which is completely free. So when it comes to assessing what we call the analysis, understanding where you are now doing your carbon inventory, all those parts of the tool we actually let cities just use for free. They use for free? How come? Because you have to finance this, don't you? Yes, but the challenge of the transition is so big. Everyone has to move at the same time. And for us, the great thing about software is of course this is a way that underlying idea with software is it's something that can scale and this is a problem where we need to scale the solution for superfast. So by giving it, by letting cities having the starting point free and doing the kind of stuff to understand where they are, it just feels it's really good to be able to provide that for free. Then obviously we're assuming that some of the cities will like the package and want the more more comprehensive, deeper features and will continue to use it with the paying tier. But to get started and understand and assess your current situation, that is just something that we really want to provide to everyone. Would you like to give us a bit of an insight of your business model? So business model is actually very straightforward when it comes to what one calls SaaS software as a service where you have a free entrance and then you have add more and more features and you pay more for the features as you add more of them. We are heading more and more towards the financial analysis. And this is actually, let's take one step back. The really interesting thing about the transition is that we know at a high level, I mean, I think we as like people in the world know that at a high level, the transition has a positive return of investment. Obviously, if you calculate the cost of inaction, it always has a positive return of investment. But even without that, the transition has a positive return of investment. The challenges, however, that you have winners and losers. So at a micro perspective, positive return of investment, but at a different stakeholder perspective, you have winners and losers. Understanding this discrepancy is actually what's guiding what we need to know to guide our financial and our political ambitions. We can't say what needs to be done, but we can help to give the best possible insight to understand these gaps. Whether winners, whether losers, where do we want to, where do we need incentives, where do we need un-incentives, etc. So given that, it is the financial analysis of the transition, which we think is the key to unlocking and make this transition happen fast enough. And the really great thing, and this has changed so much since we just a couple of years ago, is that we actually have lots of financial institutions that want to invest in the transition. And we have cities that know that these months happen. However, they don't speak too well to each other just yet. They haven't learned each other's languages. And that is the bridge we want to bridge, basically. So coming back to our business model, the more we can help with understanding this financial situation and understand where, understand the climate, the investments needed for the climate investment, the faster we can accelerate the transition. And obviously, these kind of financial functions are something that cities are happy to upgrade to. Because you went into those numbers and the different stakeholders now and the market, the entire ESG market has been growing so rapidly. I had my first conversation about it in 2019, and it was difficult because it was even difficult to describe because it was so new. By now, it's a trillion dollar market. And I found this morning in Bloomberg, they are saying that the global ESG assets are on track to exceed $53 trillion by 2025, representing more than a third of total assets under management. So we are not talking about a niche market here. Maybe this question is for both of you. This is a massive movement, but with a massive movement comes a lot of fear. Is there fear among your clients that, for example, they could lose out and it will destroy the current economic structure and it doesn't work out and say at the end, as a mayor or government leader, could lose their jobs? I wouldn't say fear. Michael, I'm looking at you because we're meeting different customers, but a bit of analysis paralysis, which isn't really fear. But it's like everyone sort of sees and understands and knows this must happen. And we are talking about the positive effects at a high macro level, hand waving high macro level. But then this has to be done into nitty gritty details in a balance sheet where you have the numbers down to the decimals if you can. And it is that going from yes, we know this must happen to where are the details? What are the exact numbers? That's a lot of levels to go through. And that the fear of analysis paralysis, not the fear of it will break the economy, etc. No, people know this must happen. It's like, but can we do it fast enough? Do we know enough? Do we have enough data? That's the fear. Michael? I can add to that. I just talked to City of Dresden yesterday. And well, they're one of the 100 mission cities for Europe. So they're there at the front. But of course, very concretely, right now, they're heavily dependent on gas and Russian gas. So of course, right now, what's the half the climate team is absorbed to prepare for the next winter? And so probably the geopolitical and the market, everybody knows we need to move fast. And exactly there is a certain analysis paralysis, sometimes also bureaucratic hurdles. Tomer talked about heat pumps, yes, but installing heat pumps in Germany is still quite a process. Installing your solar panels on the rooftop is still quite a process. So yeah, there are a lot of also bureaucratic hurdles that need to reduce. And I think that is one part where we just have to be much, much faster and more pragmatic. And then the other part is, of course, it's job creation. And of course, we're talking to cities which which has a bit too long on the old industry. But they understand what's at stake. And in the end, it's a global competition for the best job. Who's going to build the next big industry for batteries, for solar panels and so on. But we're also seeing that those jobs are coming back to Europe. So I think many European cities are well placed, but it's a global competition. And of course, there's not a fear, but kind of the know what we need to do and we need to do it fast. And of course, they need support from all levels, digital tools can help. But of course, also the right policy frameworks from federal governments, they can help a lot, revising some of the laws that make it so difficult to install some of the solutions we have, remove those obstacles and get going. And that's what we're hearing from cities. And you are right now in 70 cities, is that right? 170 cities. 170. Or globally, we are in 170 cities, exactly. And how fast did you move from the introduction of the technology to now? So of course, we did a lot of, as Thomas said, we started in the nation of Sweden. And of course, we started, we very fast saw that our technology can be used in cities. So we started with some Swedish cities. So probably for the first two, three years, we worked around with 30 cities, with those front runners, you mentioned Newcastle, we learned a lot from them. So we, you know, what we have today is co-developed with cities. So we really, that's part of our DNA. We develop our softwares together with cities, around prototypes, get their feedback improved. So really, to create the best software possible for the climate officers and the entire cities organization to use. In the last 12 months, we've seen a massive scale up in numbers of cities, also numbers, of course, of colleagues nowadays that joined. And that's partly, partly we removed some of the barriers to get started. So those, as Thomas said, those cities could start for free, starting putting their inventory, kind of see a little bit, you know, how the tool works and the transition pathway. And but we're also just, I mean, word to mouth kind of feedbacks from city to city cities that are talking about us to other cities. And say, Hey, you should, you know, have you seen this and that? And we're also creating a new, basically a new segment. So far, I'm speaking mostly for Germany, we're in our best. So far, we have had several inventory tools. Inventories are the best, best in the world in Germany. But nobody has really taken care of the next steps in the city's transition journey. And that's what we're doing. And we're creating kind of a new market. And maybe we're one of the first moors, we're also seeing some other, some other startups moving into that space. And that's great. So cities actually have a choice. And that kind of keeps the wheel turning. And that's, I would say that adds to the to the massive scale of over the last 12 months. Thomas, do you have an aim? You want to be in X amount of cities, X amount of time? Our aim is about carbon reduction. So that's like, that's the aim. And so cities follow side the aim is about carbon reduction. And that's what guides us and making sure that we funnel, that finance gets funneled to the most optimal carbon reduction. And of that follows, yes, we need many more cities and we need big cities, we need, we want to work with the ones which are have the highest potential, et cetera. But it's carbon reduction, it's the goal. And the 170 cities you're in right now, are they divided on all continents? Or has it been basically Europe and America? It's Europe and America mostly, then we have some really like because that's where we have, we have, we work most, but then we have some interesting outliers which are like coming from nothing from other continents, but basically that's where we're focusing. Are you working together with the United Nations? Was there a sustainable development goal? No, not, not, not sort of in an official capacity, but we obviously very much, obviously goal number 13 is like what we're thinking about all the time. So and then we have, you know, we, we, we meet them in all kinds of capacities in different places. I think we'll, we'll find ways. Because it would be, I mean, quite, quite efficient, wouldn't it? If the, let's say the UNDP as the biggest organization there has all access to all countries and all cities would say, look, we got that example here and we could, or you want to be totally free? No, I, well, I think, no, I think that that it would be, here's, here's like, here's, I mean, one of the reasons also why we even started the startup and wants to find a way to combine the really fast moving, start, very, very flexible startup sort of pace where you, and, and together with, with, together with big organizations and NGOs. So it was a fantastic start with the Swedish government because we got a really great combination of government agencies, Wattenfald and us, a small startup. And yeah, we want to be fast and nimble as a startup. And at the same time, we are all the time building towards the needs of these big organizations. So there will be a it will meet up. But yeah, it's, it's, it's for us to find the right balance of being flexible and, and, and adaptable. Almost always the starting point is the city. So we do get requests from, from cities, for example, in Africa, big cities, mega cities, Lagos in Nigeria. And of course, very often you end up then with UNDP or with one of the big industry networks like C40 or Eclay. So yeah, so I mean, there's a whole, whole thing, but it's also, I worked in, in, in, in the sustainable development goals before and it's, it's quite a jungle. So some at the moment for us to start something's just easy to get the conversation started with cities and then build it from there. Looking back tooma, you are actually a mathematician, right? And you have been successful agile consultant before. So why, why did you decide to take a big risk and dive into this net zero economy? Oh, simple. It's the same reason. I think most, most people, everyone in our company works with what we're doing, basically thinking like, you know, with the knowledge, with the knowledge and the profession I have, how can I make, you know, when I stopped flying and stopped eating meat with the knowledge and the profession I have, how can I make the biggest possible difference on climate? It was that simple like question. How can I make a difference? And I think everyone that has joined the company has joined us in, you know, it's software engineer or whatever has joined us thinking, okay, what, where can I, with my profession, do the biggest difference on the most important problem of all that we have? And Michael, what led you to this profession? Because you have a bit of experience already, as you said, with the SDGs and United Nations. And so tell us about it. Yeah, so I've always had an interest in development questions, of course, mainly human economic, why, why are some countries developing better than others? So of course, our strong focus on, yeah, on, on the developing world, Africa, South America. And at the same time, I love to be out in the nature. So I used to be a scout. And that's probably where my interest for environmental question comes also. And then, well, throughout my career, I haven't done too much thinking about what, what am I going to do next? Just kind of, well, I always knew I want to work out with something I have a passion for, and I somehow managed always to end up in jobs that I really, really like. And then I ended up I climate you because I moved to Sweden with my family, and I didn't have a job. And I met those guys at a job fair and said, oh, this just sounds interesting, because it combines, you know, climate and sustainability with something I haven't worked at all in is a tech company. So I'm learning still every day. And I think that is, yeah, that's, that's how I ended up kind of maybe a little bit of curiosity. And also, probably I'm one of the outliers here, because I've worked with those topics throughout my career. Many others have not. And actually, it's such a privilege to work with people that kind of finally get on the right train, but have that immense knowledge and skill level that, that, that, that we can bring it all together. So that's, yeah, definitely in the right place here, and then enjoy the ride. My experience in the last two years, working and talking to people who basically want to make the world a better place, that is a new great energy. Is that Tomar, you're nodding? Is that your experience? Is it? Yes, it's, it's, it's so much. So I, you know, recruiting tech talent, for example, should be hard. And for us, we are getting such fantastic talent coming up, or even for, we're sort of in Stockholm with most competitive places. And yes, people are really coming in with really clear mindset and energy of what, you know, of wanting to do something important and feeling they can do something. I think the energy comes from feeling, because either you go, either you get analysis paralysis, or you refocus that energy to really feel that you're doing something and that gives energy. Yeah. Yeah. And the ones who actually put their mind on it really have so much energy. It's, it's really a completely different world I can, I have the privilege to dive in. I mentioned in the intro, the quote of the UN Secretary General, who says cities are where the climate battle will largely be won or lost. Tomar, how are we doing in a battle? Well, actually, it's interesting. Cities are often, cities goals often more ambitious than national goals. And we're really encouraged by the, by the city's determination to go green. There's really such a strong will, willingness and creativity to do this. And I think just the fact that you know, how fast we've been able to scale over the last years really shows that. So, you know, I could say emissions are still going up. I could be like a glass half full. But if I say the ambition and how the really big difference when talking to cities now and just three years ago, I could see hope in this battle. Lovely. And still, we do have to talk about it because that is, yes, it is a massive industry. Yes, it is going forward with an absolute exceptional speed. And we have Paris, Glasgow, Stockholm, the SDGs, the ESGs, the Green Deal. You have your sensational dashboards for the government. And still, humanity seems to be almost unwilling to move towards this direction. And I'm not just talking about now the war in Ukraine and the energy market. We see it on all levels. It's a question for both of you to answer and I would like to start with you, Toma. What does it take to actually make the change? We have everything. We just have to make it now. What's the missing link? So we have everything when it comes to the big picture. We have everything when it comes to ambition. We have everything when it comes to the knowledge that tells us we need to act. We don't have everything yet on exactly what needs to be done. So for me, one of the missing links, there's not a missing link, but one of the important missing links is the hard core grit of breaking things down into exactly what needs to be done or rather what can be done so as to move to the next step to then figure out what needs to be done in the next step. So it's the devil is in the details. And for me, there's so much like you come to a city or you come to a nation and we all agree, but then it's like hand wavy, high level pictures and we need to break it down. And I actually think it is very important to understand, as we talked earlier, the costs and the benefits of the transition, understand how this picture looks and do understand that our winners and losers, there's no way around that. But understanding that picture, being completely transparent about that picture is so we are, we have the big picture in place, but we don't have the full decision intelligence to take the daily decisions that we need. And the answer to that is like not have the entire picture, but having what we need to do to act today and tomorrow so that we can move forward and then continue to move in the right direction. But you mentioned a very important thing, which is who is the winner and who is the loser? Ah, and that's okay. Well, that's a big question. So we need obviously the high levels will have the, you know, let's take the big energy companies, which definitely are part of the transition, but they don't want to transition too fast because they will have stranded assets making simplified picture here. But you have the same thing down to, you know, somebody that has just bought a new diesel car. This thing sums up to a new electric vehicle in 10 years time when my car is old or whatever. So the winners and losers are on all levels. And that's what makes it so hard. Okay, Michael, sorry. Coming back to the question, do you still have it? Do you know what we talked about? Oh, yeah, what's the missing link? And I think that now on a very operational level in a city, I mean, Tomer mentioned in part, it's the finance. It's, that's what I'm hearing. We're talking to any city. I mean, I don't know any city in the world that can finance the entire transition out of their own city budget. So they need external funding, they need extra investments. And you had the same thing you mentioned, the ESG market is growing. Well, there are some, you know, there's some definition problems about ESG. I don't want to go into that detail on that. Let's call it the impact investment market. They are ready to finance projects and cities do have them, but they don't speak at the same common language. The climate officer, well, even within the city, the climate office and the Treasury, they speak once a year when it comes to, you know, adding a budget line for project X and Y and maybe adding another colleague to the climate team. But they don't talk the full cost of the investments yet. And that is where we, for example, try also try to help close that gap. Basically, teaching the climate officers speaking more, the language of investors or help them prepare some of the process that are bankable or investable to be kind of ready lifted out into the market so that this transition can be faster. And of course, also sensitize the investors and the Treasury and kind of the financial providers about the needs and fears of a city organization. Because they're not, I mean, take the example of Germany, there are very, very few green bonds. Has also historical reasons. The banks are very big. They say that the administration is taking its own speed, whereas in the UK or Sweden, new public management or whatever Margaret Thatcher has done in the 80s to do to the government in the UK, obviously kind of instilled also a need to look elsewhere for funding, whereas in Germany, it's usually comes somewhere the funding comes through a subsidy. And that is also a link we're trying to close with our platform kind of bringing those actors together in a common language or what we call Tomer, you can expand on that if you want on the impact intelligence reporting to kind of really have like an executive summary that kind of speaks both the language of climate people and also investors. We're coming slowly to the end, but I really want to need to know one thing because you both mentioned it several times about not everybody is talking the same language and closing gaps and so on. Tomer, maybe you can sum it up. How do we create greater understanding and the will to change? So continuously democratizing knowledge and by doing that with a clear taxonomy ontology describing how the transition needs to happen. So transparency is a key enabler. As I said before, I think at this point, the world understands what we need to do about the climate challenge. Now it comes down to action and action comes down to financing. And if we show the path ahead as a viable path, a viable economic path ahead, if one can be transparent about that, so that's well understood, then the pressure to change will be even bigger. Thank you Tomer, that sums it all up. It was a delight talking to you both, Tomer and Michael. And I wish that your technology will be distributed all over the planet cities and reduce global emissions on a large scale. Thanks a lot and good luck to you. Thank you so much, Attis. Thank you. You've been listening to a special English edition of Degorsa Neustadt, a German podcast series by Zabilla Baden, in which she talks to pioneering leaders who are committed to making our world smarter, greener and fairer. For more information, please visit www.zabillabaden.com and the official site of the World Economic Forum.