Empowering cities
From data driven strategies to urban sustainability
Maja Manner
AFRY's pioneering approach
The race to achieve climate neutrality is a defining challenge of our time, and cities are at the forefront of this monumental struggle. With urban areas accounting for over 70% of global carbon emissions, the actions taken by municipalities will be pivotal in avoiding the most catastrophic effects of climate change. While the task ahead can feel intimidating, AFRY believes that cities possess the unique potential to lead the change and pave the way for a sustainable and prosperous future.
Through years of close collaboration with Swedish cities, municipalities, private companies, and diverse stakeholders, our teams have gained invaluable insights into the obstacles, challenges, and solutions necessary to reach net-zero emissions. Drawing from this extensive experience, AFRY, together with its partner ClimateView, has developed a pioneering methodology that is
empowering cities to navigate the complexities of climate action effectively and accelerate their transition to climate neutrality.
Multifaceted challenges confronting cities
The journey towards climate neutrality exceeds mere environmental concerns; it represents a profound societal transformation. Too often, climate action is treated as an isolated issue confined to specific departments, rather than being recognised as a systemic challenge that requires a coordinated effort across the entire city. This organisational compartmentalisation poses a significant barrier, as achieving net-zero emissions and the necessary shifts demand a comprehensive, society-wide approach involving multiple actions or “interventions”. For instance, transitioning from fossil-fuel-powered heavy trucks to electrified alternatives in the realm of goods transportation requires close cooperation between the public and private sectors. Only through such collaborative efforts can we effectively tackle the multifaceted challenges of climate change.
Municipalities face additional hurdles due to financial limitations. Climate-related initiatives often struggle to obtain sufficient funding from the constrained municipal budgets. Complexities of urban environments and the wide range of potential climate actions available add these challenges. This diversity of options makes it demanding for decision-makers to identify the
interventions that will have the most significant impact.
Despite these formidable obstacles, cities must act with urgency. The EU directive mandates that all cities achieve climate neutrality by 2045, a deadline that necessitates rapid implementation and acceleration of effective solutions.
The outcome logic - ClimateView platform
A handful of forward-thinking cities around the world are leading the change in the journey to achieve climate neutrality, setting an ambitious target of 2030 – a full 15 years ahead of the European Union's goal. This accelerated timeline is driven by a dual recognition: the urgent need to address the climate crisis and the competitive advantages that come with being at the forefront of the sustainability transition.
To reach this ambitious goal already by 2030, these pioneering cities need to adopt a systematic and meticulously focused approach, ensuring that their efforts and interventions are strategically targeted at areas with the highest potential impact in the local context.
AFRY's breakthrough approach. Navigating the path to climate neutrality
Acknowledging the pressing need for a systematic, datadriven, and standardised approach, AFRY, in collaboration with its partner ClimateView and a few pioneering cities, has developed and refined an innovative methodology for co-creating and assessing various climate actions based on desired outcomes.
Key steps involve:
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Calculating the net-zero emissions gap between the agreed target and the current state for each sector.
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Identifying an effective combination of interventions including annual tempo to address the gap per sector.
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Engaging relevant stakeholders to form necessary workstreams that can realise the portfolio of interventions as well as secure necessary funding.
Notably, the model seamlessly integrates identifying and preparing for financing a portfolio of interventions. The methodology development work has taken place within the framework of initiatives such as Viable Cities and EU Mission Cities.
To illustrate the core of the framework as shown in the chart “Outcome logic – ClimateView platform” (page 33), consider that interventions can range from shifting vehicles to more environmentally friendly alternatives, to changing infrastructure or creating incentives for people to change their behaviour. To evaluate the effectiveness of these climate interventions, it is crucial to examine how they impact various aspects of a city's systemic transition, referred to as 'transition elements'.
The outcome logic forms an integral component of the framework underpinning the ClimateView platform, which AFRY leverages to support cities and municipalities in this domain. Compared to the commonly employed Excel-based approach, the platform offers a significantly more effective and robust means to quantify and conduct impact and cost analysis for each step, encompassing the additional cobenefits. This methodology streamlines the evaluation process, enabling a comprehensive assessment of the interventions and their associated impacts.
For example, a key transition element is the shift from reliance on private vehicles to more sustainable modes of transport like walking, cycling, or public transit. The assessment process involves determining the required magnitude of this behavioural change, both how many drivers need to transition away from cars to achieve net-zero emissions, and the yearly timeframe through a technique called 'backcasting'.
By quantifying the necessary shifts across relevant transition elements year-by-year, cities can develop a time-bound roadmap and estimate the potential impact of proposed interventions at different milestones. This backcasting approach ensures that climate action plans are grounded in realistic, incremental targets aligned with the overall net-zero timeline.
The framework described is a way to systematically analyse interventions based on three different types of impacts:
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Direct impact: The intervention has an immediate effect on the transition element, such as when petrol cars are replaced with electric cars in a municipal vehicle fleet.
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Indirect impact: The intervention changes the conditions in the city in a way that affects people's behaviour, which in turn affects the transition element. An example is building more and better bike lanes and parking, which can encourage more people to choose the bike over the car.
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Enabling: The intervention creates conditions for future interventions, such as giving increased resources and powers to a traffic commission so they can carry out more measures in the future.
Analysing interventions through this robust methodology enables a comprehensive understanding of their potential to contribute to emission reductions, both in the short and long term. This systematic approach facilitates the prioritisation and clustering of interdependent interventions, allowing cities to create an effective portfolio and plan that powers the necessary shifts towards their climate transition goals within the established timeframe.
Transport of goods
The Transport of Goods example beside illustrates examples of factors that needs to be addressed to facilitate and drive through a shift from a high-carbon to a low-carbon system.
In summary, the framework has been developed to support decision-makers and officials working with climate issues in cities, to help them systematically evaluate and compare different actions and to form, influence and manage a portfolio of measures that will enable a critical pathway towards climate neutrality.
Case study: Helsingborg powers its climate neutrality plans with data-driven impact assessments
The Swedish city of Helsingborg has long been recognised as one of the nation's most sustainable, entrepreneurial, and IT-friendly municipalities. Staying true to this pedigree, Helsingborg set the ambitious goal of reaching net zero emissions by 2030 – a full 15 years ahead of Sweden's national target.
To ensure it achieves this moonshot objective, Helsingborg knew it needed to methodically evaluate the climate interventions in its action plan and prioritise the highest-impact initiatives. The city partnered with consulting experts from AFRY and technology firm ClimateView to leverage, improve and apply a cutting edge framework for quantifying and optimising the outcomes of its decarbonisation roadmap.
The impact assessment framework takes a comprehensive view, examining both the direct effects of interventions like installing electric vehicle charging points as well as quantifying indirect impacts and enabling conditions like policy changes. Using this lens, Helsingborg can identify which levers will drive the biggest emissions reductions at the least effort and cost.
"The approach and platform help us get a clear picture of our emissions and the potential solutions," explained Elin Sundqvist, Environmental Strategist for Helsingborg. "With benchmarking data and expert analysis, we can really focus our efforts on the most impactful climate interventions."
One important milestone in the process was the “all stakeholders workshop”. This was organised to gain a comprehensive understanding of the barriers and opportunities for decarbonising the transport of goods. Key individuals from the municipality representing climate and environment, finance, and procurement were joined by local logistics companies, the truck manufacturers Scania and Volvo, local energy providers, biofuel experts, and major retailers. Participants shared perspectives on supporting the transition to electric freight, uncovering roadblocks and enablers.
This problem discovery and cross-pollination of ideas generated new solutions, which participants refined through iterative ideation. Working groups then formed organically around the most promising concepts to drive initiatives forward collaboratively. The inclusive process bridged divides across the goods transport ecosystem to catalyse coordinated climate action.
By partnering with technology providers, consultants and local experts, Helsingborg has developed a robust datadriven approach to realising its ambitious net-zero target.
With outcome-based prioritisation and rigorous impact assessments, the city is now accelerating to turn its bold climate and societal vision into an achievable, verifiable action plan for a sustainable and prosperous future.
AFRY's 6 key insights.
A roadmap for cities
Drawing from our extensive experience, AFRY has synthesised six key insights to guide city administrators and stakeholders on the journey towards climate neutrality:
1. Societal transformation: Climate neutrality necessitates a broader societal shift, requiring systemic changes within cities and municipalities beyond just addressing environmental concerns. Engaging the local population through open forums and dialogue platforms enhances democratic involvement and garners broader acceptance for climate strategies.
2. Organisational and budgetary challenges: There are organisational barriers, as climate initiatives are often compartmentalised within different departments, hindering a cohesive approach. Secondly, financial constraints pose a challenge, with climaterelated budget items competing for limited resources. Overcoming these organisational silos and securing adequate funding are crucial steps towards effective climate action.
3. Collaborative approach and agility: Achieving climate neutrality demands a collaborative effort involving public and private sectors, academia, and civil society, rather than being the sole responsibility of individual cities or municipalities. Rapid implementation and the ability to swiftly exchange and replicate successful solutions across cities and municipalities through networks like Viable Cities are critical.
4. Unified, time-bound, and funded action plan: A critical requirement is a data-driven optimised portfolio of interventions and a concrete, time-bound, and adequately funded action plan to effectively achieve climate goals on schedule.
5. Standardised impact assessment methodology: Leverage a standardised methodology and supporting platform, such as the one described earlier in this article, to assess the impact of climate actions enables cities to prioritise and mobilise interventions effectively.
6. Innovative financing solutions: Strengthening expertise in financing solutions, including utilising national and European grant programmes, accessing green bonds or loans, and exploring blended finance solutions via public-private partnerships, is vital
for successfully facilitating the transition. The framework supports both relevant impact reporting for existing financial solutions as well as enabling the raising of new capital.
Let’s realise a sustainable urban future together!
The path to climate neutrality is urgent, complex, and filled with challenges, but it is a journey that cities cannot afford to delay. By leveraging AFRY's proven expertise, standardised methodologies, and powerful digital tools, municipalities can unlock their full potential to drive transformative change and secure a sustainable future for generations to come.
AFRY extends an open invitation to city administrators, private sector leaders, and fellow climate actors to explore how our pioneering approach can catalyse and support your efforts. Together, we can overcome organisational barriers, optimise resource allocation, and accelerate the implementation of effective climate actions.
In this pivotal moment, the world looks to cities to lead the way. Join AFRY's mission and let us forge a path towards urban climate neutrality – a future where economic prosperity, environmental stewardship, and a high quality of life coexist in harmonious balance. The time for action is now. Reach out to accelerate your city's transformative journey towards climate neutrality.