Climate Programme – training and communications
The Climate Programme supplements and strengthens the measures of the CO2 Act and promotes climate protection. It focuses on vocational training for skilled workers and managers and on providing information and consulting for cities and communes.
Climate training
The Climate Programme supports and promotes the training and further education of skilled workers and managers in climate-relevant professions – bringing climate protection to everyday working life.
Project support
The Climate Programme supports innovative and impact-oriented climate training projects with a focus on vocational and higher education.
Climate consulting for communes
Towns and communal authorities can contribute to a climate-neutral Switzerland in several ways: they can utilise their scope for action in climate and energy policy, they can act as role models, and they can take steps to prepare for climate-related changes. The Climate Programme offers them advice and support through a range of practical measures.
In the phase of the programme that begins in 2021, the Climate Programme will be supporting skilled workers and communes as they work to achieve Switzerland's extremely challenging net-zero target by 2050. It will also contribute to the other targets set under the Paris Agreement, specifically adaptation to climate change and climate-aligned financial flows.
Where training is concerned, the Programme furthers climate-related decision-making skills in vocational training for managers and skilled workers. In practical terms, this means providing basic information and additional aids, supporting knowledge transfer in training and in practice, and promoting training courses.
With respect to communications, the Programme provides information and consulting for municipal authorities (city and commune) so that they are able to make even better use of their scope for action on climate policy, and fulfil their role model function even more effectively. The Programme also supports official communications on climate protection.
Climate consulting for communes
Central to the success of the Programme are partnerships with vocational training and higher education stakeholders, the cantons, cities, communes and private-sector entities. Synergies between energy and climate-related issues must also be harnessed.
The Climate Programme rests on a strategy drawn up jointly by the Federal Offices for the Environment and of Energy, and is coordinated closely with the SwissEnergy action programme. Following Federal Council approval in 2016, the Programme was launched in 2017, and continues to develop the services it offers according to need.