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Digital4Climate – Transformative Climate Actions

How can we transform business models and consumption behaviours towards sustainability and carbon-neutrality? How can we use digital innovations for greening the digital sector? Team up with the European Commission and the UNFCCC and help to reach the climate goals set in the Paris Agreement and SDG11 – Sustainable Cities and Communities.

#digital4climate #greentransformation #co2neutrality

  • ✅ Completed
  • 🏁 Winner

    Congrats to Zentur.io for winning the Challenge!

  • 🏆 Prize

    EUR 3,000 per Challenge + funding programs with the European Commission and UNFCCC + joint publication | For more see Tab “Rewards”

  • 🌎 Scope

    Open to participants from all over the world

Who can participate?

Students, Researchers, Young professionals, Digital startups, SMEs, innovation labs and ventures that develop and apply innovative digital technology solutions to support enhanced sustainability and reduction of CO2 emissions across all sectors of the economy and society.

Potential Impact

Cities and local communities play an increasingly critical role in enhancing sustainability and climate action. Digital Innovations and deep tech solutions can be powerful enablers to track, trace and reduce CO2 emissions not only of industry and corporations but at the level of SMEs, startups and citizens. Collective actions led by citizens and actors across all parts of society at the local community level are critical to significantly reducing CO2 emissions and fostering long-term environmentally and socially sustainable development.

Evaluation Criteria

1. political relevance (strategic relevance)

  • Does digital innovation contribute to solving a developmentally important core problem for target groups, differentiated by vulnerable groups or disadvantaged groups (gender, minorities), or to a development bottleneck of a partner country?
  • Does innovation make a clearly defined contribution to the SDGs (which ones?)

2. scalability (probability of success)

Impact

  • Are the impact goals defined and is it explained how they will be achieved (e.g., Theory of Change)?
  • Has digital innovation already been successfully piloted and implemented? Is there evidence that the intended impact was achieved?
  • How high is the degree of goal achievement (effectiveness, quality of goal achievement) compared to other options? (Ratio result/target)
  • What are the economic, social, and environmental risks associated with innovation (especially with regard to the Safeguards+Gender areas of the environment, climate, human rights, conflict, and gender)?

Scaling intention

  • Are initial scaling objectives and further scaling options coherently presented? 
  • Is digital innovation sufficiently independent of context-specific determinants and local system requirements? 

Team

  • Is digital innovation backed by a diverse team with a clear vision characterized by leadership and entrepreneurial thinking?
  • Does the team have clear ambitions to scale their digital innovation?
  • Target group centricity
  • Is there broad knowledge of the target audience and stakeholder needs?
  • Have elements of digital innovation been tested and developed together with the target group?
  • Are vulnerable target groups (esp. women) or is the partner country able and willing to use the innovation in the long term (long-term demand)?

Sustainability

  • What is the benefit or added value of digital innovation for target groups or the partner country? 
  • Is there a comprehensible business model that ensures sustainable financing of the digital solution?