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Klimaträtt is Swedish for “climate friendly”, literally translated it means “climate appropriate”. Uppsalahem initiated the Klimaträtt Project with the main objective to provide help, support and inspiration for our tenants in their pursuit of a more climate friendly life style. The Lindell family living in a single-family home in Hässelby inspired the project; having reduced their climate impact by 62% within six months in 2011 while maintaining their standard-of-living. The main concept of the project was upscaling the experience of this family: to support customers in their reduction of the climate footprint, without cost increase or other sacrifices for them, but still being commercially viable for companies. To achieve this ambitious idea, an innovative application was developed giving people direct and detailed feedback on their climate footprint.The project was launched together with ICA, Sweden’s largest grocery retailer, which meant that two fundamental parts of daily life were covered. To extend the project’s foundation even further, more partners joined the team covering different types of transportation and other types of consumption patterns.
The Lindell family used cutting-edge technology, coaching by experts on food, transport, living, and other consumption patterns; they received custom-estimated feedback on their climate impact
on a weekly basis. In the project “the One Tonne Life”, the family demonstrated the huge potential for reducing emissions without any major limitations in daily life but deeper knowledge of the consequences of everyday choices is necessary. With this example in mind, Uppsalahem and ICA carried out surveys indicating that people generally are very interested in living in a more
҇҇Tools used. A substantial part of Klimaträtt was the development and the usage of the app. The app is innovative and unique combining different kinds of data and enabling participants to receive
feedback. Based on a survey, their baseline climate footprint was estimated. The user’s climate footprint summary for the past several weeks, in total and by category, is displayed in the
app. Users create their personal goals and check their performance on weekly basis.
The main page shows the user’s own polar bear to visualize the current footprint in relation to target. When the user is doing well, a thermometer shows the temperature going down, and
a graphic displays the ice expanding and a happy polar bear. When emissions are greater than targeted, the ice floe melts,and the polar bear is in trouble.
Klimaträtt is the first example where residents in an apartment building can receive detailed, weekly feedback on how accommodation, food, transportation and other consumption patterns affect their climate footprint. The automatic feedback allows the participants to act, follow up and ultimately change their behaviour with support, information and inspiration from the involved companies. Another unique feature of Klimaträtt is its inclusive nature, in which a number of organisations, NGOs, public sector, private sector and science and education work together.
The project also provides a further basis to scale up. The project ran on commercial grounds, i.e. services/efforts/activities were developed from a commercial and scalable perspective. All participating organisations see benefits for the organisation’s own business-like strengthening of the brand, increased knowledge of climate impact from products and/or services, increased loyalty.
The evaluation of the project shows that awareness about daily choices and climate-friendly homes have a significant impact on individual carbon emissions. The climate impact from the active participants started to decrease by 31% on average within the first six months. Some people experienced a positive effect on their personal finances (53%) and some reported increasing costs (27%), others couldn’t tell the effect on their personal finances.
Jörgen Larsson and Anneli Kamb at Chalmers University of Technology carried out the evaluation of the participants’ possible sacrifice on changing lifestyle. Positive effects largely make up for the sacrifice that the participants have made in order to reduce their environmental impact. Several participants mentioned throwing away less food due to better weekly scheduling, which was previously seen as a barrier. Improved weekly scheduling allowed some participants to
shop less frequently, which also saved time.
✚✚ A very innovative project with a strong technological
component where tenants could monitor their consumption
patterns through a smart phone application.
✚✚ A multidimensional project, as it monitored consumption
includes food, energy and other utilities.
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