Making the invisible cost visible

Climate impact is easy to ignore. It lives in the future, feels distant, and carries the convenient label of 'someone else's problem.' Michiel sees this daily: municipalities juggling competing priorities, with carbon consequences perpetually bumped down the agenda.

His starting point was simple but radical — what if you made climate costs visible in the present tense, in euros, today?

Turning values into numbers

Together with all the local municipalities of the Green Metropolitan Region, Michiel's team ran a pilot calculating the avoided climate damage costs of switching to green energy. They drew on energy consumption reports, CO₂ emission factors, and the Social Cost of Carbon price.

The result: a €0.5 million annual investment avoids €30 million in climate damage costs every year.

A cultural shift, not just a policy win

Every municipality in the GMR chose green electricity. But the bigger shift was cultural: 'green' stopped being a values argument and became a numbers argument.

For those just getting started

Spreading the method across regions

Michiel is running trainings, sparking new pilots, gathering more good examples across North-West Europe.