Climate Neutrality Tool

The SEI Climate Neutrality Tool is intended for policymakers, government ministries, analysts, and technical experts involved in long-term climate, energy, and development planning. It is particularly useful for institutions responsible for preparing, updating, or reviewing strategic documents such as NECPs, climate strategies, decarbonisation roadmaps, and sectoral transition plans.

The tool was first conceptualized in 2019 for the Estonian government and was further developed for use in Ukraine, Moldova, and Armenia in 2025-2026 with more advanced features and outputs. It was developed to help answer whether reaching climate neutrality is possible for a country in a specified timeframe (i.e. by 2050), what it would take, and what socio-economic effects it would have.

For this purpose, the tool was developed using a bottom-up approach. It starts from specific mitigation measures across sectors and estimates their effects on emissions, investment needs, operating costs, and broader macroeconomic impacts. Its main features include scenario comparison, sectoral integration, editable inputs, automatic recalculation, marginal cost analysis, and socioeconomic assessment, all within an easy-to-use Excel-based framework. For an overview, it also includes an interactive dashboard.

As it works fully within Excel, it is practical for institutional users who can update inputs and run scenarios directly in the model. It is also designed to be transferable, as the framework can be adapted to different policy contexts, datasets, and sector conditions, though it may require updated country-specific data and calibration to do so. For quality assurance, the tool includes a data quality classification system that marks inputs by confidence level, and it is designed to be updated as better data becomes available.

Currently, the tool is not open-sourced. It’s specifically developed for the countries and provided to decision-makers with a license agreement.

The tool was first conceptualized in 2019. The work was commissioned by the Estonian Government Office and was funded under the Cohesion Funds 2014–2020 operational programme, Priority Axis 12 “Administrative Capacity,” Measure 12.2 “Development of Policy-Making Quality.” The project was initiated in cooperation with the Estonian Ministry of the Environment, which also served as a key partner in its implementation.

The further developed and extended model for Armenia, Moldova, Ukraine was launched in 2026. This work was carried out within the framework of the Green Agenda for Armenia, Moldova and Ukraine project.  This regional project is funded by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida).

The tool is currently being prepared for institutional use in Moldova, Ukraine, and Armenia. This will allow governmental institutions in these countries to use the tool to update strategic planning documents, including NECPs and other national climate and energy strategies. Over time, the tool development team plans to assess how the tool is being used in these countries and draw lessons for further improvement. This experience can support expansion to additional countries that require a similar planning tool.

The team is also exploring potential funding opportunities to further develop the tool, including transforming the current Excel-based framework into a web-based platform.