Frequently asked questions

Learn more about Klima-Taler

Klimataler City FAQ

You want to use Klima-Taler gamification for increased participation in climate protection in your city or region? Then you are in the right place.

Citizens can participate at any time without registration. They don’t need to provide a name, an email address, or a phone number. Our business model is based on an annual participation fee from the municipalities in the Climate Coins program, not on data marketing. The participation for local vendors and businesses is part of the license costs and is free of charge for the businesses. The processing of data is, of course, GDPR-compliant in Germany.

We take care of IT and the administration of the software. The main task of the municipality is to communicate their participation in the Climate Coins program. Citizens need to be informed that their city is participating, that it is now time to collect Climate Coins. For this, we have prepared a variety of marketing materials that you can use right away. Many of these materials are delivered to you as finished printed materials, already adapted to your municipality and delivered free of charge. These include DIN A1 sandwich posters for outdoor advertising, long DIN flyers for citizens, and information materials for traders, city businesses, participating schools, clubs, and employers. We make it easy for you to communicate with a media kit and prepared text modules for the local press, schools, and employers. You also receive a digital data dashboard, with which you can show live on your own website how many kilometers have been walked, cycled, and traveled by public transport by the participants in your municipality. Here everyone can also see how much CO2 these activities have already saved in your municipality.

Participation lasts for at least 12 months. It is extended by another year if it is not canceled 3 months before the end of the participation period. 

Your municipality is part of an eco-system of participating municipalities from the start. At present, these are 15 cities and regions in Germany and the first two cities in Finland and Portugal. At the end of the year, we are already planning with over 30 municipalities. Your citizens thus enter into a playful competition with these municipalities and can also exchange their Climate Coins in all participating cities and regions with Climate Partners. This growing diversity ensures high participation numbers and lasting motivation. 

Furthermore, we have over 7 years of experience in gamification. We know that simplicity is the key to success. So from the very beginning, we opted for fully automatic measuring of journeys, which does not require manual entries. This also makes fraud significantly more difficult. In addition, we are the only provider to offer a playful way to incentivice electricity, heat, and water saving in addition to promoting green mobility. Here, participants can connect their respective consumption meters with the Climate Coins app, receive valuable information about their own consumption, and of course also collect Climate Coins for savings. Naturally automated and with various anonymized evaluation options for participants and for the municipalities.

The Climate Coins program goes even further than mobility and consumption gamification. We consistently develop the software as an ecosystem. So via an open API interface and open widgets, third-party providers like a parking space, ride-sharing, or shuttle service app can also be connected. The participants thus have the opportunity to collect Climate Coins through the use of additional services. This makes the use diverse and varied.

Darmstadt, Königstein im Taunus, Kelsterbach, Nidderau, Eschborn, and Rüsselsheim in Hesse. Münsterland, Aachen, Hamm, the district town of Bergheim, Gladbeck, and Düsseldorf in North Rhine-Westphalia. The municipality of Schweich in Rhineland-Palatinate, Meiningen in Thuringia, and Prenzlau in Brandenburg. Turku in Finland and Sintra in Portugal.

The Climate Coins are developed and issued by Blacksquared GmbH in Berlin. The company was founded in 2012 and has focused on gamification solutions for the two major challenges, climate change, and health promotion. With the Changers Fit App, employees of companies are motivated to a healthier lifestyle, and with the Climate Coins App, citizens and local vendors in cities and regions are integrated into municipal climate protection. Blacksquared wants to show with the Climate Coins that participation in climate protection can be fun! That one can avoid prohibitions and abstinence, and that climate protection is profitable for everyone involved.

The number of participants strongly depends on communication. Regardless of this, there are app-internal incentives, such as the “Friends invite friends” feature. In Aachen, the number of participants was over 20,000 after a few months. In smaller municipalities, the potential is 5 to 10 percent of the residents.

There are already hundreds of cross-regional offers in the Climate Coins App marketplace, available to all cities and municipalities. These include Germany’s most popular outdoor app, Komoot, or PooPick, the provider of biodegradable dog waste bags. We recommend reaching 5 to 10 local companies, as well as incorporating some municipal offers, such as free entry to the swimming pool or discounts on cultural and sports events.

Climate Coins in the app also always have their own value. The participants can use them to reduce their own CO2 emissions, which are caused by flights, car trips, and energy consumption. This empowerment is fun, sensitizes for one’s own climate impacts, and costs no money, as each Climate Coin in our system already verifiably results in a saving of 5 kg of CO2. Thus, personal savings can offset an equal amount of emissions.

Yes, the app can even distinguish between fast cyclists and slow car drivers. The tracking is based on the analysis of GPS and sensor data from the smartphone, from which probabilities for the types of mobility arise. The accuracy is between 90 and 95 percent and depends on the smartphone manufacturer, the installed electronic components, the environment in which it is measured, the length of the routes, the traffic volume, and the network coverage. However, inaccuracies cannot be ruled out by the technology, especially since we do everything we can to record the routes in the background as battery and data efficient as possible. The comfort for the users, not having to manually start and stop a route measurement, far outweighs these inaccuracies.

In Münster in 2019, we mainly reached young, digitally savvy users, while 2.5 years later in Aachen we have a good cross-section of the population. We are seeing an increasing number of users and significantly older participants. The current crises have shaken people up. They want to get involved.

Mobility detection is not limited to the municipality. Every journey of the participants is recorded, including of course those of commuters who use regional and long-distance trains. The savings are attributed to the respective city team in which the participants have registered.

Yes, train journeys are also recorded. We distinguish between public local transport with distances of up to 50 kilometers and long-distance travel over 50 kilometers. Local transport is calculated with a CO2 saving of 0.075 kg per km and long-distance transport with a CO2 saving of 0.095 kg.

For one Climate Coin, you need to travel about 28 kilometers by bicycle and on foot, 67 kilometers by bus and train (within the city) or about 53 kilometers by long-distance transport. We calculate the savings in comparison to car emissions of about 220 grams of CO2 per kilometer. We only calculate the CO2 balances for routes that were covered outside of buildings. Approximately 20 percent of the measured distances are also covered for sporting reasons (jogging, walking your dog, etc.). In order not to have to filter out these routes, which do not replace car trips, in a complex way – also for reasons of data economy – we reduce the CO2 savings for distances covered on foot and by bike from 220 g/km globally by 20 percent to 176 g/km. This allows us to achieve the correct CO2 saving values across all distances.