Climate-4-CAST

The City of Tampere is involved in the international Climate-4-CAST project, which develops tools and methods that support local public authorities for achieving cities' climate neutrality goals around the Baltic Sea Region. The project is funded by the Interreg Baltic Sea Region 2021–2027 Programme and includes partners and cities from six countries surrounding the Baltic Sea: Denmark, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Poland, and Sweden. The Climate and Environmental Policy Unit is responsible for the project's implementation in the city.

Project Goals and Activities

The Climate-4-CAST project aims to develop and pilot a Climate Action Decision Support Tool that supports local public authorities within the cities in decision making, and specifically in climate budgeting processes. A key output will be an open-source tool that visualizes the realization of cities' emission forecasts and targets, as well as the emission and financial impacts of climate actions implemented by cities. Alongside the tool development, the project develops operational models and practices to ensure that the information produced by the tool is better utilized in city decision-making, especially in financial planning processes.

The tool and operational models are being piloted in six cities around the Baltic Sea: Aarhus, Bytom, Norderstedt, Riga, Tampere, and Östersund. Additionally, the key learnings and outputs from the project will be disseminated to other Baltic and European cities through international climate budget summits and training sessions towards the final phase of the project.

The Role and Goals of the City of Tampere

The City of Tampere plays a central role in the project's implementation and acts as a pioneer and model city in the deployment of the tool and climate budgeting processes. The Climate Action Decision Support Tool, that is being developed in the project, is largely based on the emission scenario tool currently developed and used in the city. In addition, in the operational model development, Tampere shares actively its experiences of the climate budgeting, that the city has been implementing since 2019. The sharing of experiences of the tool and climate budgeting increases the visibility of Tampere’s ambitious and active work towards climate neutrality.

In the Climate-4-CAST project Tampere is responsible for coordinating the development of the tool and its implementation's operational models. Tampere is also one of the six pilot cities in the project. In the pilots the decision support tool will be tested and further adjusted to cities’ needs. In later stage the goal is to integrate the tool in cities’ decision-making and climate budgeting process.  

The specific goal of Tampere's pilot is to enhance the information production about key emission sectors and especially, the impact evaluation of the transportation sector. Additionally, the aim is to further develop the economic impact calculation of climate actions. The calculation helps in the resourcing of climate actions in financial planning, enables the prioritization of actions, and increases understanding of the long-term profitability and potential cost savings of actions.