CommitClimate is an Interreg Europe project led by Riga Technical University in cooperation with partners from the Baltic Sea Region. It encompasses four countries – Latvia, Estonia, Poland and Sweden – and addresses the urgent need for municipalities to decrease their energy use and greenhouse gas emissions in order to contribute to climate neutrality and meet European climate targets. Cities and local governments are expected to plan sustainable investments and develop long-term climate strategies, however, they often struggle to turn these strategies into concrete, evidence-based actions. CommitClimate was created to bridge this gap and help local authorities move from plans on paper to real-world implementation.

The main challenge of the project was combatting the lack of capacity and tools for municipalities to make informed climate decisions. Local authorities and stakeholders want to reduce emissions, but they cannot clearly determine which measures will have the greatest long-term impacts and how much these measures will cost. Specific barriers include limited access to reliable local data, a lack of analytical and modelling tools, limited technical expertise within municipal teams, and difficulties comparing different development scenarios. Because of these uncertainties, municipalities find it hard to prioritise investments and justify their decisions.

To overcome these barriers we developed the CommitClimate Simulator – a digital scenario modelling tool, which helps municipalities move from data to action. The simulator allows local governments to input various parameters – population, building area, number of registered vehicles, etc. and model different climate measures, compare scenarios, estimate energy consumption and CO₂ emission reductions, in order to better understand and prioritise their investments. Instead of relying on assumptions, municipalities can now base their strategies on clear evidence. The Simulator is available in five languages – English, Latvian, Estonian, Polish and Swedish; each partner municipality has received its’ own version of the simulator, with customized parameters in order to make scenario results as accurate as possible.

Our team worked closely with municipalities by hosting regular training sessions and workshops in all partner countries to ensure that our solutions were accessible and comprehensive at the same time. We collected stakeholder and citizen feedback and integrated local energy, emission, infrastructure and socio-economic data into the tool.
Along with the Simulator, we created two supplementary tools: the Household CO₂ Calculator, which municipalities can use to educate residents about their environmental impact, and the CommitClimate Online Platform, which contains a variety of guides, self-assessment tests, case studies and other useful resources developed by project partners.

Interreg support, through the Interreg Baltic Sea Region Programme and Interreg Europe, played a key role in enabling cross-border cooperation and knowledge exchange. It allowed us to tailor our solutions, so that they could be used anywhere with minimal adjustments. As a result, municipalities are now better equipped to make informed decisions, align local policies with European climate goals and accelerate their transition towards climate neutrality. CommitClimate shows how European cooperation can strengthen local capacity and turn climate commitments into concrete action and has been recognised as a good practice within Interreg programmes, demonstrating that the approach is transferable to other regions to support wider climate policy implementation.