Talking 5 with Local Public Services Member ClimateView
Each month, techUK's Associate Director for Local Public Services, Georgina Maratheftis, interviews a member active in the local government space about their vision for the future of local public services and where digital can make a real difference to people and society. This month we talk with Anne Robert, Regional Account Executive at ClimateView, about the role that digital plays for climate action in cities.
Welcome Anne. Firstly, tell me more about you, your career and how you got to this position today?
I'm Anne, I am a 36-year-old lawyer based in Paris. With almost 10 years of experience in French public law, I have seen the difficulties that local authorities can face when they have to deal with red tape and budget constraints. That's why I realized that I wanted to support innovation within local authorities, to help them make a successful transition to a carbon neutral economy. Today I do this through my work as Regional Account Executive at the Swedish startup ClimateView.
What is the greatest opportunity for local government when it comes to digital?
Accelerating climate action! Innovation, tech and digital is used to speed things up, connect, monitor and get an overview of all the moving parts. This is exactly what digitalisation of climate planning, and in extension data-driven climate financing, can do for a city.
At ClimateView, we work closely with a list of cities – now more than 40 – including Bristol and Nottingham in the UK. We provide them with a digital platform based on a standardized process and best practices. City climate teams use the tool – ClimateOS – to visualize their data, identify trends, and model various scenarios.
Because the platform is based on quantifiable data, the step to finance your climate action is also inherently shorter. It can quantify the costs and co-benefits of possible climate actions, allowing cities to make a case to their financial controllers, to public funding bodies under programmes such as the EU’s Green New Deal, and to private investors.
Look, if we don’t connect climate action to financing, we’re simply not going to solve the problem. There are huge amounts of funding available, but to secure a share of it, cities need to make comprehensive climate investment plans, supported by accurate data. So this is a big opportunity where digital innovation brings scalable solutions.
What is your vision for the future of local public services and places?
Cities have a chance to make the most of innovation to reimagine the way they deliver public services in general, and climate action in particular.
We see how this vision is coming to life in cities like Nottingham, where they're working towards their 2028 goal, in Heidelberg’s transparency as an EU Mission City, Dundee providing open data, Helsingborg optimizing investments, and Cincinnati involving stakeholders and making the most of the Inflation Reduction Act.
My vision is a world where city halls can consider investments with an overview of the measurable co-benefits of every environmental investment – so weighing up, for example, the cost of new cycle paths against the benefits for the city’s health system.
This effectively means that the opportunities with a digital climate action platform don’t stop within the municipal administration - it can also include citizen co-creation. When processes and information is digitalised, governments can build stronger relationships with the public. That has huge value.
If local governments can make transparent, digital and data-driven decisions for the most impactful climate investments, we are not only building green cities – we’re building great cities.
Georgina Maratheftis
Georgina is techUK’s Associate Director for Local Public Services
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