It’s hard to believe, but the Scottish Climate Intelligence Service (SCIS) has just completed its first full year of implementation: and what a year it’s been!

Over the past twelve months, all 32 Scottish local authorities, alongside the Scottish Government, have come together to take a huge step forward on the journey to net zero through local climate action. Their commitment, ambition, and willingness to try a completely new approach — one that’s never been done before in the UK — has been nothing short of inspiring.

At the centre of SCIS is a strong partnership between the Edinburgh Climate Change Institute (ECCI) and the Improvement Service, in addition to a brilliant relationship with our platform provider ClimateView. We’re working together to support local authorities as they aim to deliver on their climate ambitions and implement effective interventions to reduce area-wide emissions. And this isn’t just about reducing emissions, it’s also about the multiple additional benefits these actions will make in areas like health, transport, energy, climate adaptation and delivering a just transition for communities across Scotland.

Three Key Areas We’ve Focused On

Our work over the past year has centred around three main areas, and we’ve seen real progress in each:

1. Building Capacity

We’ve offered a range of support through seven different capacity building approaches, from training sessions to drop-ins and one-on-one support. It’s been brilliant to see such consistent engagement from all 32 local authorities across Scotland. Building confidence and capability is vital for consistent, long-term climate action.

2. Data Platform and Inventory

One of our major achievements this year has been setting up a national data platform for Scotland. Every local authority now has access to their own dashboard, with 114 officers already set up with login accounts. Councils have begun adding their climate interventions (292 and counting!) into the ClimateView platform, helping us all to build a much clearer picture of local climate action across the country.

3. Developing Partnerships

Partnership working is at the heart of SCIS, and over the last year we’ve been busy strengthening connections. We’ve engaged with 16 Scottish Government policy areas, spoken to over 125 unique stakeholders from a variety of backgrounds including the Scottish public sector, third sector, and communities and national government. We've hit the road with the SCIS Roadshow, visiting Glasgow, Edinburgh and Inverness to meet our users, heads of service and elected members to discuss and develop the programme moving forward.

Looking Back, and Ahead

It’s fair to say SCIS has generated real momentum over the past year. We’ve helped bring a more consistent, yet flexible, approach to how Scotland coordinates and delivers local climate action. This approach will help attract investment, drive collaboration and make the most of shared knowledge and resources held by organisations and communities across the country.

Of course, this is just the start. But it’s important to pause and recognise how far we’ve come. SCIS is already showing how effective local and national partnership working can be. If you want to find out more about our impact in our first full year of operation, you can dive into the details in our Annual Impact Report 2024-25.

Looking ahead, over the next few months SCIS will be welcoming new team members, developing and auditing our methodology and data, and delivering new resources and training on different aspects of the platform. You can stay on top of all things SCIS by signing up to our quarterly newsletter here.

We’re excited to build on this progress in year two and beyond. Thank you as always to our local authority partners for your continued support, collaboration and engagement with SCIS — we can’t wait to see what’s next.