Making climate targets actionable

Reduction Path was a concept within Planted's Impact OS designed to help companies understand whether their planned reduction actions were actually enough to reach their emissions targets.

The goal was to connect climate ambition with measurable progress, turning separate pieces of information into a model that could support real decisions.

Company: Planted
Role: Senior Product Designer
Product: ESG SaaS Platform
Timeline: 2024 – 2026

The problem

Companies could define emissions targets and plan reduction initiatives, but understanding whether those actions were actually enough to reach the target was much harder.

Targets, current emissions and individual actions often existed as separate pieces of information. The challenge was to bring them together into a model that could support better decision-making.

From actions to measurable impact

One of the first challenges was making reduction actions quantifiable.

Instead of treating an action as a simple initiative or task, we explored how its expected impact could be connected to emissions data and expressed over time.

This created the foundation for understanding not only what a company planned to do, but what difference those actions could realistically make.

Actions linked to KPIs with their estimated reduction impact.

Mapping the reduction path

The concept brought key elements into one visual model:

Baseline

Current emissions

Planned actions

Target

Remaining gap

The goal was to make a complex climate trajectory easier to understand at a glance.

Users needed to see:

•where they started
•where they were today
•how planned actions could change the trajectory
•whether those actions were enough to reach the target

Reduction Path waterfall visualising the gap between the current trajectory and the target.

Designing for decision-making

Reduction Path was not meant to be just another chart.

The design challenge was to help users answer questions such as:

•Are we on track?
•Which actions are expected to have the biggest impact?
•How much of the gap is still unresolved?

This meant balancing analytical depth with a model that sustainability teams could understand and use without turning the experience into a complex forecasting tool.

Strategic gap analysis surfacing where further action is needed.

Designing for real-world complexity

Reduction strategies rarely consist of one action or one timeline.

The experience had to remain understandable as companies added more initiatives, worked with different time horizons and managed increasingly complex emissions data.

We also had to consider how the model could scale without overwhelming users with too much detail at once.

Validating and refining the model

Customer feedback helped us test whether the visual model matched how sustainability teams thought about their reduction strategy.

Test the model

We reviewed the Reduction Path with customers to understand whether the visual model reflected how they thought about their reduction strategy.

Identify friction

Feedback highlighted that understanding the trajectory was only part of the challenge; maintaining the underlying information also had to remain manageable.

Account for growing complexity

As actions and indicators increased, we explored how the model could scale without exposing too much information at once.

Refine the experience

These findings shaped how we balanced simplicity, scalability and the amount of information shown at each level.

What changed

Reduction Path connected strategic climate targets with the operational work required to reach them.

Instead of looking at targets, emissions and actions separately, users could understand them as parts of the same trajectory — and see where further action was still needed.

Want to learn more?

There's more behind the modelling and trade-offs involved in turning climate targets into a usable product experience.

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