Strengthening Climate Services through Innovative Business Models

Climate services play a critical role in bridging scientific knowledge and societal needs, enabling informed decision-making for climate adaptation and mitigation. Their effectiveness increasingly depends on their capacity to foster business innovation by translating climate knowledge into scalable solutions, market-ready services, and sustainable value creation. This contribution presents the experience developed within Climateurope2, a Horizon Europe project coordinated by the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, based on an in-depth literature review and on 43 semi-structured interviews conducted with climate service providers, with the aim of analysing how business innovation dynamics can enhance the uptake and impact of climate services.

This contribution examines the business models underpinning climate services and assesses their innovation potential for the future development of the climate services market, with a particular focus on pathways that support transformative and sustainable societies. The analysis shifts attention toward climate services provided by the private sector, complementing existing research that has largely focused on public-sector provision. Building on prior work on climate services business models, this study adopts a comprehensive framework to analyse value creation, delivery, and capture in climate service provision.     
Drawing on in-depth, semi-structured interviews with a diverse set of climate service providers across Europe, the study applies a structured and empirically grounded coding approach covering all nine elements of the Business Model Canvas. This enables a more detailed and up-to-date understanding of how providers operationalise and adapt their business models in response to heterogeneous user needs, market fragmentation, and evolving policy contexts. The findings highlight emerging patterns of hybrid business models, key challenges to commercial viability, and innovation strategies that combine public and private value creation. The study provides empirical insights into the mechanisms through which climate services can enhance their market relevance while maintaining their societal function, contributing to the long-term sustainability of the climate services ecosystem.