Supporting governments with climate analysis

Why leverage avoided emissions ? #scope4 creates value? 1) to maximize its avoided emissions, a heat pump manufacturer can benefit from targeting customers equipped with the most carbon-intensive heating solutions to displace as much fossil energy as possible. 2) A shared car service provider can target cities where the use of cars for short trips is prevalent rather than cities with extensive use of good quality public transportation. Altogether, avoided emissions can be the right incentive for companies to focus on the right climate solutions and the right markets. For #enterprise: By enabling the quantification of climate-related benefits, avoided emissions assessments can provide leading companies (i.e., first movers) with the necessary platform to develop and scale solutions in markets with the highest decarbonization potential, resulting in a new type of climate leadership and value creation. For Investors: Investors and financial actors wishing to move beyond investees' #GHG emissions and associated risks can leverage avoided emissions to understand and quantify the #netzero aligned opportunities associated with current and future investment decisions. Avoided emissions assessments can provide investors with this additional opportunity-oriented lens. This can help them identify, assess, and ultimately invest in companies that are future-proofing their businesses by leading the #greentransition and driving #decarbonization with their solutions. For policymakers: Governing bodies can leverage avoided emissions at two complementary levels: Prioritizing government action, i.e., to support the identification of the most relevant decarbonizing solutions to be deployed in a given area or, alternatively, the areas to be prioritized for selected decarbonizing solutions or actions. Supporting policy mechanisms (e.g., incentivization mechanisms, regulation) to speed up decarbonization efforts from businesses as well as through innovation. This is particularly relevant in the context of regulations aimed at incentivizing the most efficient solutions - avoided emissions-based regulations could incorporate a dynamic element to the regulations by basing these on the evolving market averages or identified best-in-class solutions (e.g., the most energy-efficient solution on a 3-year period becoming the energy efficiency threshold for that type of solution the next 3-year period).

"This report was prepared in the context of the OECD - OCDE Horizontal Project on Building Climate and Economic Resilience. It was done by the OECD Strategic Foresight Unit, Office of the SecretaryGeneral, and was overseen by the Head of the Unit and Senior Counsellor for Strategic Foresight Dr Rafał Kierzenkowski. The project leading up to this report was carried out by Dexter Docherty (Junior Foresight Analyst) and Trish J Lavery PhD (Former Strategic Foresight Counsellor), with support from Alanna Markle (Former Junior Foresight Analyst), Laura Camila Castillo Gutiérrez (Junior Policy Analyst), Niamh Higgins-Lavery (Assistant) and Hilary Landfried (Former Intern), under the supervision initially of Duncan Cass-Beggs (former Head of the Strategic Foresight Unit) and then Dr Rafał Kierzenkowski. The layout of the toolkit was created by Julienne DeVita (Design Futures Expert). [...] In an increasingly complex world, governments and organisations must proactively stress-test their long-term policies and strategies against possible future scenarios. Successful policies and strategies must be designed to thrive under many different possible contexts, and in circumstances where many currently held assumptions are no longer valid. Planning across such timelines is an inherently speculative activity. There is no data about the future. What is known for certain is that the future will be different in surprising ways. It is the duty of governments and other stakeholders to be adequately prepared for the full range of possibilities. The toolkit provided here is one model for governments and organisations to engage in future-focused public policy. It draws on multisectoral research which could be useful to many foresight and strategic planning teams. The toolkit can help smaller foresight teams undertake far more complex and mature futures work to support robust public policy and lay the foundation for the ongoing integration of anticipatory governance into modernday operations throughout government. The toolkit was piloted with government partners in New Zealand Government, the Government of Republic of the Philippines, Government of Canada, Government of Indonesia and Vyriausybės kanceliarija / Office of the Government of the Republic of Lithuania, to ensure it has broad applicability across diverse policy domains. It was found to enable governments and organisations to carry out rigorous foresight processes to enhance the resilience of their long-term strategies." Link to download: https://lnkd.in/ehR89RPF

Earth Observation is no longer just about capturing images from orbit. It’s rapidly becoming one of the most important tools we have to understand what’s happening on the ground—and act on it. Recent developments in EO are showing a clear trend: using satellite data to support real-time, local decisions in areas that impact lives, environments, and economies. Here are four examples that stand out: 1. Detecting Wildfires Before They Spread Google and Muon Space are building Fire Sat, a constellation of over 50 satellites that will scan fire-prone areas every 15 minutes. With real-time thermal imaging and cloud-based AI, it’s designed to catch wildfires early—before they become disasters. 2. Mapping Carbon Storage from Orbit The European Space Agency’s Biomass satellite uses a powerful radar system to measure how much carbon Earth’s forests are actually storing—by looking through the canopy itself. This gives scientists a more accurate understanding of climate-related forest change and carbon sinks. 3. Monitoring Land Use with Consistent Imaging EarthDaily Analytics launched the first satellite in a new constellation purpose-built for high-frequency, high-accuracy landscape monitoring. It’s especially relevant in agriculture, forestry, and environmental policy—where visibility over time matters more than snapshots. 4. Enabling Localized Impact Forecasting Xoople has developed a cloud-native Earth Observation platform that blends EO data with local models to forecast regional environmental risks—like floods, soil degradation, or vegetation stress. It’s EO made practical for governments and agencies on the front lines of climate and resource planning. These aren’t just satellites in orbit. They’re part of a growing EO ecosystem that’s focused on enabling faster, more confident action—where and when it’s needed most. From archive to alert. From static to streaming. From observation to intervention.

As we head towards the end of 2024 I want to highlight a few projects I've been involved with this year that are ready for takeoff in 2025. The first of these is Climateverse --> https://climateverse.net/. Climate-relevant data exists in abundance globally, often published openly by governments at multiple scales, but the quality of this data may be poor or unknown, and the best way to integrate data into helpful adaptation, mitigation, and disaster response efforts may be unclear. South Asia in particular is on the front lines of climate crisis in the form of extreme heat, flooding, emergent disease, and other issues, while at the same time occupying the forefront of data publication for climate response. The Climateverse team is producing standardized, high-quality metadata scorecards, using the open-source Dataverse (https://dataverse.org/) platform to improve data accessibility, experimenting with the use of LLMs for data discovery and analysis, and training collaborating agencies in India and Bangladesh to expand and integrate these efforts in sustainable ways. This project is supported by CrisisReady (Harvard Data Science Initiative and Direct Relief), The Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability at Harvard University, and The Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute, Harvard University.

As climate change accelerates, policymakers and researchers need immediate access to accurate, science-based data to inform critical decisions about natural climate solutions and forest conservation efforts. That's why the nonprofit CTrees developed the first global system to monitor, report, and verify (MRV) carbon stocks and land-use activities for every ecosystem on land, delivering critical data needs of policy and markets. In this blog, Aleena Ashary and Jules Marenghi explain how CTrees has used the cash funding and cloud credits from its 2024 Amazon Web Services (AWS) Imagine Grant to enhance the organization’s flagship Jurisdictional MRV (JMRV) tool. This free, open data platform provides precise annual measurements of carbon stocks, forest area, emissions, and land use activities—revolutionizing how governments and organizations track climate policy progress and develop jurisdictional carbon credit programs. https://lnkd.in/grmttxXD

A short but insightful interview with Marco Larizza from World Bank on Malaysia's Climate Change Institutional Assessment, talking about what Malaysia can do to ensure its climate change actions are effective. These include: preparing regular climate change risk assessments, and including these findings in its fiscal risk statements; implementing climate tagging in the government budget; increasing ecological fiscal transfers to state governments and more. https://lnkd.in/g8Vz5y5Q