Navitage Financing for Built Environment Decarbonisation

video explainer

The Solevento Social Simulation is an immersive experience that places participants in a near-future decarbonization challenge within Solevento – a fictional European city.

Designed to support the capability building programme offered as part of the NetZeroCities project, this interactive workshop allows participants to experience tensions and tradeoffs that cities face when implementing energy retrofits for buildings and transitioning to clean energy.

Participants step into their designated roles as city officials, business representatives, civil society advocates, and other key stakeholders, tasked with balancing the urgency of climate action with real-world economic and social concerns.

They navigate contested claims and complex dilemmas:

Energy poverty – ensuring that no-one is left behind
Business competitiveness – balancing sustainability with economic viability
Public resistance – overcoming skepticism and social inertia
Policy tradeoffs – making difficult decisions in an evolving urban landscape

The Solevento Social Simulation in Action

NetZeroCities Seasonal School: Fuelling Climate City Contract Implementation

Madrid, November 2024

The Solevento Social Simluation workshop was first held as part of the NetZeroCities Seasonal School in Madrid, in November 2024. As part of the three-day meeting aimed at helping cities advance their Climate City Contracts (CCCs), the simulation allowed representatives from 15 Mission Cities to:

Step into diverse perspectives to understand decision-making pressures
Engage in dynamic negotiations to craft climate action policies
Explore creative solutions in a risk-free, collaborative environment

Key Takeaways for Cities:

Acknowledgement Through Empathy – Stepping into others’ shoes fostered a deeper understanding of stakeholder motivations.

Embracing Complexity – The simulation demonstrated that system change is non-linear and requires a holistic approach.

Unlocking New Solutions – Participants experiment with bold decarbonization strategies without real-world consequences.

NetZeroCities Seasonal School: Speeding Up the Energy Systems Transition to Climate Neutrality

Milan, June 2025

During the sixth NetZeroCities Seasonal School in Milan, in June 2025, city representatives joined a hands-on session exploring energy transition policymaking.

Co-led by Georgia Cameron of Dark Matter Labs, and Soelvento Simulation designer Sophia Ruiz Vasquez, the workshop combined expertise in systems thinking, policy design, and city-scale decarbonisation, providing a rare opportunity to link strategic policy thinking with grounded city action

Participants moved through two rounds of structured group work. First, they took on fictional roles to stress-test ready-made policy mixes – evaluating their political traction, social acceptability, financial feasibility, and key implementation risks.

Then, returning to real city contexts, participants adapted the mix using local priorities and constraints. With the help of a structured canvas and a set of practical policy tools, they explored how regulatory sandboxes, stakeholder partnerships, and finance mechanisms could support more effective transitions.

Experience Solevento!

Immerse yourself in the complex challenges, opportunities, and societal responses driving the push for built environment decarbonisation. Explore diverse pathways for financing building retrofits and renewable energy projects that have been implemented, tested, or proposed for piloting in various European cities. See for yourself, the real-world cases behind the Solevento social simulation..

Explore Solevento

Deepen Your Knowledge

Alongside the interactive experience, we provide a curated reading list with real-world case studies, innovative policies, and potential solutions inspired by the simulation. This resource serves as an entry point for cities looking to explore actionable decarbonization strategies.

Explore Reading List

EU Cities Mission and NetZeroCities

The EU Cities Mission aims to deliver 100& climate-neutral and smart cities by 2030 and to support all European cities in reaching climate neutrality by 2050. It’s an ambitious and urgent undertaking – putting cities at the forefront of systemic transformation.

NetZeroCities is a consortium consisting of 34 partners from 27 European countries. It manages the EU Cities Mission Platform and directly supports the 112 European Mission cities supporting the development of Climate City Contracts, as well as a broad programme of peer learning, tools, and technical support.

NetZeroCities works as a service-oriented platform supported by world-class practitioners to help cities overcome the current structural, institutional and cultural barriers they face in order to achieve climate neutrality by 2030. The project aims to enable European cities and citizens to show the way forward towards an inclusive, thriving, climate resilient and sustainable future. To do so, it tailors advanced capabilities related to systemic change, citizen engagement and democratic governance, capital and financial structuring, and social innovation.

Learn more about the EU Cities Mission and NetZeroCities

Policy Simulations as an engagement tool

Policy Simulations take participants into the future to engage them in co-creating policies to reduce risk, build resilience, or achieve other urgent goals. Together, participants explore the research-based future stories offering realistic effects of business-as-usual trends. Taking on the roles of future policymakers, they are invited to embrace diverse values and perspectives while negotiating issues such as food crises, new transport routes, accelerating the mining of critical raw materials, or protecting traditional livelihoods and ecosystems.

The immersive character of this experience aims to stimulate imagination, invoke emotions, encourage learning and knowledge sharing, and motivate collaborative action to…

Identify interconnections between environmental, economic, and social challenges
Understand policy resistance and develop strategies to overcome it
Facilitate cross-sector dialogue to build inclusive climate policies
Inspire actionable insights for improvements