Challenge:

For the first time in more than 20 years of UN negotiations, the COP21 conference held in Paris in December 2015 aimed to achieve a legally binding and universal agreement on climate, with the aim of keeping global warming below 2°C. Climate-KIC, Europe’s largest climate innovation partnership, knew that there was no silver bullet for tackling climate change and that no country could go it alone in the negotiations.

Ahead of COP21, Climate-KIC wanted to prove its ability to model the low-carbon transition and demonstrate the vital importance of collaboration in the international political response to climate change.\

Approach:

Edelman worked to extend the life of Climate-KIC and the UK Department for Energy and Climate Change’s (DECC) Global Calculator, which modelled the role of lifestyle, technology, fuels, land and food in creating a low carbon world.

Edelman proposed a unique earned strategy leveraging the value of Climate-KIC’s huge Global Calculator data resource, and partnered with the Financial Times to co-create an interactive Climate Change Calculator showing the effectiveness of national climate change pledges ahead of COP21.

The partnership showcased Climate-KIC’s climate leadership and modelling abilities to a business audience, providing the organisation with a platform to engage with new strategic partners.

Results:

Climate-KIC and the FT launched the Calculator in the run-up to COP21 in Paris, based on a methodology developed with funding from the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London and by a team based at Imperial College London and the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore.

In the first 24 hours of the tool going live on the FT website, it received 10,000+ unique hits and was shared more than 1,500 times by users. An accompanying social media campaign led to tweets by the likes of the UN Development Programme to its 804k followers.

The Climate Calculator also won data-visualisation of the year at the 2016 Royal Statistical Society awards, where it was commended for its ability to engage and draw readers into realising the scale of the climate change challenge.