NetZeroCities

Kausal, a global provider of open-source climate solutions for cities and regions, is proud to showcase its collaboration with the NetZeroCities project. This partnership exemplifies Kausal's commitment to empowering cities with innovative tools and support to achieve their climate-neutrality goals.

The EU-funded Cities Mission Platform, managed by NetZeroCities, is scaling up its support to all European cities from what it is already providing the current 112 Mission Cities striving for climate neutrality. Recognising the importance of open-source software, open APIs and data portability, the NetZeroCities seeks to ensure a level playing field for technology providers.

Kausal's contribution to the service offering of NetZeroCities is the development of an online econometric modelling tool. This NetZeroPlanner tool allows cities to input their city-specific data or utilise default data to visualise their unique path to net-zero emissions. By adjusting the relative emphasis on various aspects of climate work, cities can better understand the public and private funding requirements over the coming years.

Sean Murray, Sustainable Cities Consultant as part of the NetZeroCities consortium, emphasises the need for such an online tool:

"Cities need an easy-to-use, scalable tool for making top-level estimates, including costs, to understand the big picture of their investment needs into sustainability. Kausal's tool promises a scientifically sound self-service solution based on modelling NetZeroCities have already established, with a complex Excel-based approach manually, in a way that allows us to update it as data improves over time."

As the Kausal software is licensed with an open-source license, contributions to the software and the calculation models can be provided by numerous third parties. The Stockholm Environment Institute, a partner in the NetZeroCities consortium, contributes to improvements of the assumptions, data sets and modelling to ensure that the results are validated and based on the most recent knowledge.

Charline Mougin, Data Strategy Advisor at Eurocities, a partner organisation in the NetZeroCities consortium, highlights the open-source approach:

"Collaboration, transparency, and data interoperability are key to accelerating progress towards climate-neutrality targets in cities across Europe. Data needs to flow between systems and cities need to benchmark their data while ensuring the privacy of any sensitive city data."

Kausal's commitment to open-source extends beyond its collaboration with NetZeroCities. The company actively participates in research and development consortia, such as the Climate-4-Cast project funded by the EU’s Interreg BSR program, which aims to streamline the climate budgeting processes within cities. As an impact-driven company, Kausal seeks to collaborate with all relevant research organisations and projects to improve the tools available to cities and regions for understanding and prioritizing actions to achieve sustainability.

Jouni Tuomisto, Chief Science Officer at Kausal, describes the company's open science philosophy:

"We believe in the power of collaboration and transparency. By avoiding walled gardens and closed-source software, we aim to work with a wide range of partners to develop the most effective tools for cities and regions. Our goal is to help all stakeholders to understand and agree on what needs to be done, why and when, in order to reach a sustainable operating mode as quickly as possible."

While the NetZeroPlanner tool is free to use, Kausal offers additional tools and support directly to cities. These include customised solutions that consider specific actions and projects identified by the cities, as well as branded portals and data management systems that streamline sustainability data management, reporting, and communications.

With its unique open-source approach and expertise in climate solutions, Kausal is well-positioned to support cities and regions in their journey towards a sustainable future. The collaboration with NetZeroCities serves as a testimony to Kausal's dedication to driving positive change and empowering cities and regions to achieve their climate-neutral emission targets.

For more information, please contact:

Kausal

Joonas Pekkanen, CBO | joonas.pekkanen@kausal.tech | +358 50 584 6800