2022-26
Connecting
dots and doables for climate action
Citizens & companies need to drive down emissions, yet cities struggle to get them on board.
Working with city administrations on climate policies we crafted a digital tool –
the »Klimaportal«.
Bundling all data, policies and stakeholder opportunities for synergies not usually leveraged.
Communities using the platform
What we needed to solve
Better
framings for implementation
Design does not stop at aesthetics, it’s about actionable strategies.
While this bubble chart takes some effort to grasp, it shows everything at a glance:
Major strategic leverage. Electricity, heating & mobility have great cost and emission reduction potential as well as the least cultural resistance.
Please note: The German BISKO standard excludes non-energy-related emissions (like food and industry) which account for over 30% of total emissions.
Showing impact and progress in relation. Whole industries visualise climate efforts as treemaps, bar charts & tables.
Excluding a temporal axis is great for documentation – without showing what needs to be done urgently – and basically an act of Green Hushing.
What we needed to solve
Better
framings for implementation
Design does not stop at aesthetics, it’s about actionable strategies.
While this bubble chart takes some effort to grasp, it shows everything at a glance:
Major strategic leverage. Electricity, heating & mobility have great cost and emission reduction potential as well as the least cultural resistance.
Please note: The German BISKO standard excludes non-energy-related emissions (like food and industry) which account for over 30% of total emissions.
Showing impact and progress in relation. Whole industries visualise climate efforts as treemaps, bar charts & tables.
Excluding a temporal axis is great for documentation – without showing what needs to be done urgently – and basically an act of Green Hushing.
Where city administrations fail spectacularly
Getting everyone involved
As of 2025 climate action is gridlocked in Germany.
Political winds and funding shifted, scientists are ignored, industry excels in regulation rollback and greenwashing, citizens are aware yet unable or unwilling to take up responsibility, civil movements crumbled.
While the rollout of renewable energy hints at an exponential, fossil fuels are far from a phase out. Renewables simply stack on top.
To leverage local implementation, our team talked to everyone: Mayors, farmers, energy providers, industry, citizens and initiatives.
Our goal was to break up silos, navigate through the bureaucracy and create win-win synergies among these stakeholders. We consulted, translated and co-created new processes together.
Crafting digital interfaces was only the last step.
The “Klimaportal” is a web platform
for climate action in your city.
A modular SaaS, often hosted by the city administration on a subdomain. Set up by our team and myself, maintained by city officials and/or local initiatives.
Translate targets into everyday language
Climate policies are often written in technical language.
To enable everyone to understand the necessity of targets and context, papers and policies are translated.
Show which activities bring emissions down quickly
We are still lacking public awareness of solutions with the most impact – due to conflicts of interest in politics and media coverage.
By aligning the whole information architecture around actionable implementation, we shifted the focus to what’s needed.
Building bridges between stakeholders & silos
The most crucial and underrated part of implementation is cultivating and scaling new collaborations among powerful stakeholders.
By consulting and co-creating we devised new strategies and made them available to everyone with easy interfaces.
Available bridges & tools
These processes require content, consulting, prototyping and partners. Once sketched out, the system is plug-n-play.
Procure land and roof area for solar and wind
Land owners like farmers can rent their land to local citizen-energy-cooperatives.
Everybody wins: Profits from the lease and energy park stays in town, energy prices and emissions go down.
Connect citizens with energy cooperatives
Energy cooperatives offer citizens the opportunity to invest in local renewable energy projects.
Acceptance for wind farms run by locals is much higher!
Local service providers and bundle discounts
Bundling leads and logistics can save costs for everyone.
Citizens get bundle discounts, service providers save on time when working street-by-street.
»Climate Pact« for collaboration
This alliance of companies, institutions, organisations and administration aims for a collaborative commitment, exchange and showcasing of success stories.
Local initiatives, success stories and events
Groups and activities get more visibility with a profile on the platform.
The blog and calender is open to everyone – from intitatives to citizens, sharing their efforts and opportunities to engage.
Bundle funding programs and advisory
Collecting already existing offers and programs in one place provides an easier entry for citizens.
Showcase
Playful rather than polarising
The future should be fun. For a scenario module I created a modular set of isometric illustrations highlighting solutions.
When pulling a slider for “electricity”, more solar and wind pops up while calculating emission reduction and financial savings.
Visually engaging
I’ve devised a few principles for our visual language, leaning on experience and evidence from climate psychology. I highly recommend checking out ClimateVisuals!
Close to real life
Local photos if possible. Real people rather than stock & strong filters.
Inviting narratives
Humans want to belong. Showing cargo bike riders in a suit is an invite to rewrite the story of the world around you.
Collective action
We can only prevail working together: The transformation requires new relationships & community efforts.
Balancing accessibility and complexity
We built custom backend plugins to extend the headless CMS with tailored features – bar/line/donut/bubble charts, flexible bento box grids with a sidebar for dashboards or policy profiles and a climate policy navigator.
While the design system gets white labeled, a dedicated color palette and font are used for data visualisation.
Interfaces are structured intuitively and provide content editors with much flexibility, allowing the system to grow with requirements over time. All components follow web standards for accessibility.
Shoutout to the team(s)
Wandel WerkStadt
Our team at WWS did an incredible job bringing the Klimaportal to life and on track. Such a feat always takes a small village. More about WWS here.
Cities & communities
Our clients co-created a lot of these processes & interfaces with us. Tight feedback loops, user testings and invaluable insights got us from ideas to implementation.
Partners
Building bridges requires partners on the other side. From campaigns to implementation, services and strategy, we’re grateful for all collaborative efforts.
Let me know
what you
think.
Old School
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