Viable Cities Finance Dashboard

The main target users of the tool are city planners, municipalities, citizens, policymakers and government agencies.

The tool serves as a decision-support system, offering data and processes to assist decisionmakers. It plays a role in awareness raising and learning and fosters dialogue on climate investment planning.

It supports cities in answering questions like:

• Are our planned climate actions aligned with our climate objectives, or do we need to undertake additional actions?
• Are the financial investments required to achieve the goal available? Are our plans realistic, or is some actor shouldering an unnecessarily large or unrealistic burden?
• Are our assumptions and methodologies used for calculating our emissions and costs reasonable?

The VCF Dashboard, first launched in its beta version in 2022 and followed by a second beta in 2023, is a sophisticated tool designed to support Swedish cities in climate investment planning for 2030. Developed with the intention of providing comprehensive assistance in environmental strategy formulation, the tool’s user guide, which can be downloaded directly from the tool itself, offers an accessible overview of its background and methodology.

Key features of the tool include detailed insights into current emissions in cities from both a territorial and consumption-based perspective, using household-level data. It also forecasts emissions up to 2030, incorporating population growth and other socio-economic data, and breaks down emissions into various sectors and categories. The tool enables users to explore options for reducing emissions, with a detailed analysis of the effects on emissions by 2030, alongside the costs. It computes necessary costs for different stakeholders, distinguishing between capital expenditure (CAPEX), operational expenditure (OPEX), savings, income, net present value (NPV) and co-benefits.

The tool is open-source, free and open access, primarily used by municipalities in their climate investment planning within the Viable Cities programme. It allows for a straightforward operation and is effective in communicating the implications of climate transition within municipal organizations. There are no additional costs required to access the tool.

Cities using the model can review all assumptions on the website, provide feedback and even submit their own data. There has been a continuous dialogue with various stakeholders, including Trafikverket, which verified some of the transport-related assumptions. The tool’s code, developed in Python, is publicly available on the GitHub platform.

KTH is the host organization, with the Swedish Energy Agency acting as the responsible authority in the Vinnova Strategic Innovation Programme, which also involves Formas and a range of other partners, such as Trafikverket and RISE.

Next steps include:

• Add more co-impacts in the model, that is, positive and negative consequences of climate action in cities such as reduced health care expenditure, increased energy security and geopolitical resilience, among others.
• Update the baseline emissions continuously and align the assumptions with more accurate and timely data.
• Add a marginal abatement cost curve for the user to analyze the effectiveness of different investments.
• Integrate financial indicators to assess capability and explore funding opportunities for users developing their climate investment plans.
• Expand the model to more countries.
• Extend the model to include adaptation measures and nature-based solutions.