Helsinki-based climate tech startup Kausal has secured €880K in seed funding from investors like Innovestor and Zubi Capital to support its mission of helping cities worldwide achieve their sustainability goals. The startup offers a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform that allows local governments to efficiently plan, monitor, and coordinate a range of sustainability initiatives, from carbon neutrality to biodiversity conservation and circular economy measures. Recognizing that cities are major contributors to global CO2 emissions and their actions significantly impact citizens’ ability to live sustainably, Kausal’s technology promotes transparency and communication within city administrations and with the public, ensuring that sustainability efforts are more data-driven and actionable. This funding will further their expansion in regions like DACH and North America and enhance their platform’s accessibility for cities of all sizes, enabling them to set and achieve clear sustainability targets.
Cities account for over 70% of global CO2 emissions. Being responsible for infrastructure planning and numerous services from waste management to education, city administrations have a huge impact on citizens’ possibilities to lead a sustainable life. However, city administrations are typically highly siloed, and a lack of internal communication often leads to different departments being unaware of each other’s actions. Kausal aims to change this by helping both city governments and citizens take action toward a more sustainable future.
Founded in 2020 by co-founders Sonja-Maria Ignatius, Juha Yrjölä, Jouni Tuomisto, and Tero Tikkanen, Kausal sees that cities’ need for transparent progress tracking and internal coordination for their sustainability strategies is large and growing. Many citizens are requiring urgent actions and transparency about what their city is doing for a sustainable future. Advanced cities are not only focusing on cutting climate emissions and adapting to the impacts of climate change but are also addressing related problems such as local biodiversity preservation and enhancing economic circularity.
However, the common practice of tracking sustainability projects with spreadsheets and only reporting progress publicly through annual reports lacks transparency and accuracy. The data collected is also often outdated, as many organizations only track it once every couple of years. Given the urgency of climate change and related sustainability challenges, organizations need to stay on top of what’s going on and make changes quickly. With Kausal’s technology, city governments can set clear sustainability targets, build actionable plans, and help both administrators and citizens stay on track of progress.
“The concept of open and close-to-real-time tracking and communication of public sustainability projects is still revolutionary, even though it shouldn’t be. We want to bring everyone involved to the same page for accountable, effective and data-based decision-making. Our new investors and partners have seen how city governments desperately need new tools to track their sustainability progress. Since starting up, sustainability has risen higher and higher in city governments’ agendas, fuelled by the demands of their citizens for action,” says Sonja-Maria Ignatius, CEO and co-founder of Kausal.
The seed funding will help Kausal build on sales and marketing in the DACH region and North America, markets where they have seen a significant need for more efficiency in public sustainability work. Kausal will also develop its platform to make it easier to use for cities and governments of all sizes, providing impact assessment of different policy measures and supporting decision-making.
“Our investment in Kausal underlines Innovestor’s dedication to a sustainable future. Kausal’s diverse clientele, spanning cities and governments worldwide, actively strives to reduce carbon emissions and enhance climate resilience. Kausal’s platform not only aids its clients in achieving their climate objectives but also has the potential to support a wider range of sustainability goals. The team’s already impressive achievements represent merely the initial phase of the journey as they scale into new markets,” says Myron Seto, Partner at Innovestor.
One of Kausal’s clients, the City of Zurich, will publish its first status report on the net-zero climate target towards the end of 2023. The Kausal Paths tool, as an integral part of this report, will be used to transparently and interactively present the development of greenhouse gas emissions in comparison to the target path as well as concrete climate actions.
“We chose Kausal Paths because it is a flexible, easy-to-use and powerful platform that allows us to calculate historical and future emissions, evaluate different climate scenarios and check whether we are on track to reach our net-zero target. Kausal Paths helps us to effectively monitor and communicate our net-zero journey,” explains Philippe Stolz, Project manager at the Environmental and Health Protection Office of the City of Zurich.
“During the past few years, organizations have taken big steps towards climate consciousness, and the awareness for sustainability issues and actions taken is constantly increasing. We are ready to help cities turn their climate goals into actions,” concludes Ignatius.
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