The North star

The project is based on the ongoing work on the Umeå climate roadmap, where around 50 actors from all over society collaborate with the goal of a climate-neutral Umeå.  Despite the commitment, the climate transition takes too long and risks being hindered by a number of barriers in society that the project will explore and find solutions to minimize.  

Identified barriers to climate change mitigation

Organizational lock-ins 
Every organization is designed to effectively deal with certain issues, and over time has developed a set of practices. They determine how budgets, project models, division of responsibilities, knowledge requirements for employees, etc., are designed. This is entirely correct from some perspectives, while it creates conflict and hinders innovation in other aspects, especially the holistic ones, such as climate change. 

Behavior change: 
It is about both the residents' behavior to reduce climate emissions and organizational behaviors; activities that different actors carry out, and that the municipality does not have a mandate to influence. 

Sub-optimization: 
Each organisation can decide on activities to reduce climate emissions, for example by streamlining its own processes. However, they find it difficult to get an overview of the entire system transition and, as a consequence, there is a risk that they will have a negative impact on other parts of the system and inadvertently hinder the system transition.

To become climate neutral, we need to deal with these obstacles and change our ways of working, we need to work more holistically with system innovation.

Shared learning and testing of system solutions

The project is divided into both learning and knowledge-enhancing parts where RISE's expertise in areas such as system transformation, sustainable leadership and transformation management will give the actors more capacity and ability to work with transition in their respective operations. Prototypes for system innovation will also be designed and tested.

Från abstrakt till generellt 
Ska stödja innovationskapaciteten genom att skapa en gemensam förståelse för vilka hinder som finns för en viss omställning, och hur dessa kan hanteras. I det här steget kommer en utbildning erbjudas för att deltagarna från kommunen, kommunala bolag, företag och organisationer ska ha samma kunskap om innovationsmodeller och hur lösningar kan designas. 

From general to concrete 
System innovations need to be pilot-tested. In order to understand what barriers and obstacles exist, and turn them into opportunities, knowledge must be applied in the real world. Through the project, the knowledge of innovation models will be used in practical cases. Through workshops and prototyping, the actors will have the opportunity to work with creative actors to twist and turn problems and find new proposals for solutions, which can go beyond current frameworks and practices. 

From concrete to general 
Will take the lessons learned from the training and pilot tests into proposals on how current governance, collaborations and practices need to be developed. The purpose is to learn from the project activities to understand which working methods need to be developed to enable the system transition.

Pilot programme for climate-neutral cities

The project is funded through the Net Zero Cities platform, which drives the work with the EU mission of 100 climate-neutral and smart cities in the EU by 2030. In the program, Umeå will also collaborate with several European cities but also regionally with cities in northern Sweden.