Climate change is a collective challenge that requires community-driven solutions. Recognizing this, the Klima-Taler Network has emerged as a pioneering initiative – a growing community of cities united by their commitment to sustainability. By incorporating City Teams on the Klima-Taler app for residents, these municipalities foster climate-friendly behaviors and empower citizens to contribute meaningfully to local and global climate goals. This article explores how the network operates as a collaborative ecosystem, highlighting how the Klima-Taler app works, the role of MOTIONTAG tracking technology and mobility insights dashboard, and success stories from cities like Aachen and Leer.
Cities that are Part of the Klima-Taler Network
How Klima-Taler Apps Work
The Klima-Taler app is the cornerstone of the Klima-Taler Network, designed to encourage and reward sustainable mobility behaviors among residents. Here’s how it works:
- User Registration: Residents download the Klima-Taler app and optionally create a profile (the app does not ask for personal information such as email address, name, or phone number). They then join their city’s team on the app.
- Mobility Tracking: The app, powered by MOTIONTAG’s automated mode detection, seamlessly tracks mobility activities such as walking, cycling, public transport usage, and car trips — without manual input from users.
- Earning Klima-Taler: For every eco-friendly activity tracked, users earn Klima-Taler (climate coins) based on distance traveled and CO₂ emissions saved. The Climate Coins are automatically created for every 5 kilometers traveled by bike, walking, or public transport.
- Redeeming Rewards: Klima-Taler can be exchanged for discounts, sustainable products, or services offered by local businesses and municipal partners. The app has offers from over 500 local merchants and more than 40 public swimming pools.
- Community Challenges: The app features local and cross-city challenges where residents can collectively work toward sustainability goals, fostering a sense of community and friendly competition.
- Progress Monitoring: Users can track their individual contributions to CO₂ reduction in four different areas (green transportation, energy and water saving, sustainable consumption, and climate change adaptation), while cities can view aggregate mobility data to inform urban planning decisions.
This intuitive and automated process ensures high user engagement and long-term behavioral change while providing municipalities with high-quality mobility data.
Klima-Taler App Interface:
What is the Klima-Taler Network?
The Klima-Taler Network is more than an incentive-based program; it is a community of forward-thinking cities that have integrated Klima-Taler into daily life. The app rewards eco-friendly actions — such as cycling, walking, and using public transport—with Klima-Taler (Climate Coins) that residents can redeem for discounts and sustainable products. This network creates a shared ecosystem where municipalities, businesses, and citizens collaborate to reduce emissions and achieve sustainability targets.
Key Features of the Klima-Taler Network
- City Teams on the Klima-Taler app: Each city offers its own team on the app tailored to local needs, ensuring relevance and engagement.
- Community Engagement: Cities organize local challenges and events, encouraging residents to adopt sustainable lifestyles.
- Data-Driven Insights: Municipalities access actionable mobility data, enhancing urban planning and infrastructure development.
How the Community of Cities and Citizens Benefits
Shared Climate Impact
The Klima-Taler Network enables cities to collaborate, learn, and measure collective progress toward CO₂ reduction goals. Actions rewarded through Klima-Taler foster community-wide behavioral change, making sustainability a shared responsibility.
Data-Driven Urban Planning
Access to real-time mobility data allows municipalities to design responsive urban spaces, optimize transport networks, and allocate resources efficiently.
Strengthening City Partnerships
The network creates opportunities for public-private partnerships, enhancing the scalability and effectiveness of climate initiatives.
How MOTIONTAG Technology and Dashboard Support German Cities
Seamless Automated Mode Detection
MOTIONTAG’s automated mode detection is the technological backbone of the Klima-Taler apps. By accurately identifying transportation modes—such as walking, cycling, or public transit—without manual input, the technology ensures that sustainable behaviors are fairly rewarded across all participating cities.
MOTIONTAG’s mobility data collection technology leverages different smartphone sensors. It automatically recognizes twelve modes of transportation, including walking, cycling, cars, buses, trams, subways, city and regional trains, rapid transit railways, airplanes, ferries, and cable cars, with a 97% accuracy rate.
MOTIONTAG App Individual Travel Diary and Rethink dashboard
Benefits for the City Community
Consistent Data Quality: Ensures reliable mobility tracking across all network cities.
Cross-City Benchmarking: Facilitates comparisons and knowledge sharing among participating municipalities.
User-Centric Design: Simplifies participation, encouraging sustained user engagement throughout the network.
Informed Urban Development: Enables city planners to make data-driven decisions tailored to residents’ mobility patterns.
Accessible Data for Local Impact
The Rethink dashboard, developed by MOTIONTAG, supports cities with the easy-to-use data visualization tool. It is designed for towns and municipalities with limited financial and labor capacities regarding mobility data analysis. With various KPIs and dynamic heatmaps, municipalities can effortlessly access and analyze near-real-time data generated by the app without any substantial financial investments or mobility data analytics on their team.
Case Studies: Success Stories from German Cities
Stadt Aachen: A Real-World Success Story
The City of Aachen launched the Aachen.move app in partnership with MOTIONTAG and Klima-Taler.com. This initiative showcased how incentive-based programs powered by advanced analytics can achieve measurable climate goals. Key results include:
- 8% Median Reduction in Carbon Emissions: Users of Aachen.move demonstrated substantial reductions in carbon footprints through sustainable mobility choices.
- 67.8 Million Kilometers Tracked: Reflecting high user engagement and providing extensive data for urban mobility planning.
- Data-Driven Urban Planning: Insights from the Rethink dashboard enabled Aachen’s urban planners to optimize public transport routes, enhance bike lane utilization, and improve traffic management at transportation hubs.
Strategic advantages of the Rethink Dashboard in Aachen:
- Privacy-First Approach: Data collection adhered to strict privacy standards, ensuring user trust.
- Reduced Infrastructure Investment: The Rethink dashboard eliminated the need for extensive technical infrastructure and specialized personnel, providing ready-to-use insights.
- Customized Interventions: Analyzing user segments allowed Aachen to implement targeted initiatives, optimize resource allocation, and enhance climate impact.
Stadt Leer: Building a Climate-Active Community
Leer engaged citizens through customized incentives, leading to high adoption rates of its city app (over 6% of the total population) and increased participation in local sustainability programs, providing special discounts and Klima-Taler offers at 54 participating local businesses and retailers. As a result, the city came in first place in the nationwide challenge of the Klima-Taler app by a large margin.
Gamification and Behavioral Change
Gamification elements in the Klima-Taler app have proven to be highly effective in motivating a broad demographic to adopt more environmentally friendly habits. Insights from the 2024 Klima-Taler App User Survey in Gladbeck, conducted by IMOBIS and FONA – Research for Sustainability, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, highlight three key findings:
- Does the Klima-Taler app reach older age groups? Yes, 80.6% of users are over 30.
- Is the app only suitable for climate-conscious individuals? No, it appeals to a broad audience. Eighty-four percent of users own one or two cars, 61.6% do not have a monthly or annual public transport pass, and 87.5% do not use car-sharing services.
- Does the app influence user behavior? Yes, 72% of users report making more environmentally friendly choices, such as walking, cycling, or using public transport.
These results demonstrate that the Klima-Taler app is effective among young, climate-conscious individuals and encourages older demographics and those less familiar with climate action to make more sustainable mobility choices.
Looking Ahead: Scaling the Community and Sustaining Impact
Expanding City Participation
Since launching in 2023 with 10 municipalities, the Klima-Taler Network has grown to 24 cities and municipalities by the end of 2024. For 2025, more than 40 cities and districts have confirmed participation, including the entire Kreis Viersen and the first regional association. Major cities such as Cologne, Hamm, Darmstadt, and Aachen have joined, and Munich is set to launch in mid-2025. The Braunschweig Regional Association, with 1.2 million residents, and the City of Frankfurt am Main have also confirmed their participation. By the end of 2025, the network aims to include around 80 cities, municipalities, and districts.
Additionally, the network is expanding through technology partnerships. Municipal app operators can integrate the Klima-Taler function using a Software Development Kit (SDK), allowing Klima-Taler to grow within existing city app ecosystems. The first SDK integrations have already been implemented in the HEAG Darmstadt app (Darmstadt im Herzen App) and the Hamm public utilities app (hamm: App), and more integrations are planned.
Enhancing Data-Driven Decision-Making
The Rethink dashboard demonstrated its value in Aachen by offering municipalities critical insights for optimizing public transport and infrastructure. Extending these analytical capabilities to other cities will enable data-informed policy adjustments, contributing to broader emission reduction targets.
Fostering Long-Term User Engagement
Case studies underscore that sustained user engagement hinges on continuous incentive improvements and relevant local rewards. Successful strategies include gamification elements, community challenges, and personalized mobility insights, all enhancing participation longevity.
Promoting Inter-City Collaboration
Documented outcomes from cities highlight the advantages of shared learning. By leveraging collective knowledge through the Klima-Taler Network, cities can accelerate the adoption of best practices and more efficiently achieve climate targets.
The Klima-Taler Network represents a transformative shift in how cities approach climate action. By forming a community of municipalities, the network fosters a culture of sustainability grounded in data-driven decisions and collective responsibility. Success stories from Aachen, Leer, and many other cities illustrate the tangible benefits of this collaborative model. As the community continues to grow, based solely on documented outcomes and best practices, it will play a crucial role in shaping climate-resilient urban futures across Europe and beyond.