Google Cloud has launched a Climate Finance Accelerator, together with the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and KPMG in Singapore.
The accelerator aims to channel capital toward companies with market-ready climate fintech solutions, and to facilitate financial institutions’ adoption of these solutions to impact multinational corporations (MNCs) and small and medium enterprises (SMEs).
Climate fintech companies are invited to submit innovative solutions to address problem statements co-crafted with stakeholders from DBS, HSBC, OCBC Bank, Standard Chartered Bank, TDCX, and UOB.
These problem statements reflect the following real-world challenges faced by financial institutions:
- Identifying and quantifying synergies and trade-offs between the social and environmental aspects of ESG, so organizations can more effectively access and adopt transition financing.
- Harnessing retrospective and forward-looking datasets to help organizations create achievable, science-based transition pathways that can be assessed against codified taxonomies.
- Standardising the calculation, verification, and disclosure of carbon emissions data across industries to allow clients – especially those in hard-to-abate sectors – to monitor and manage their financed emissions.
- Automating the resource-intensive process of pooling validated carbon emissions data from an MNC client and its suppliers, so a relationship manager can make an efficient and reliable assessment of how the client is faring against its net zero commitments.
- Integrating ESG impact analysis into staff performance metrics to incentivize actions that reduce carbon emissions across an organization and its supply chain.
- Enabling relationship managers to provide SMEs with bespoke financing solutions that are tied to their implementation of sustainable business practices.
Climate fintech companies are encouraged to submit their applications for the Climate Finance Accelerator by December 3, 2022 here.
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Eligible applicants will be given the opportunity to tap cloud computing credits of up to US$100,000 – each year for two years – under the Google for Startups Cloud Program.
By January 2023, up to 15 finalists will be shortlisted and matched with problem statement owners for a six-week programme, throughout which, they will refine their solutions and receive mentorship from the Point Carbon Zero Program Advisory Board and Google Cloud’s technical subject matter experts.
The finalists will then pitch their market-ready solutions to the Advisory Board, the problem statement owners, venture capital and asset management firms, and Google Cloud’s technology ecosystem partners at a demo day hosted at the Google Singapore campus.
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The demo day will be followed up by industry engagement sessions between the finalists and financial institutions at the recently launched ESG Impact Hub.
The Climate Finance Accelerator is part of the Point Carbon Zero Program, which was jointly launched by Google Cloud and MAS in July 2022. The programme aims to catalyse the incubation and adoption of climate fintech solutions in Asia over the next three years.
“No one organisation can solve a complex and constantly evolving challenge like climate change on its own. Collaboration and partnerships are critical, whether it’s getting granular ESG data to understand problems that are unique to this region, or addressing problem statements on where and how sustainable finance can incentivise change,” says Dr Darian McBain, MAS’s Special Advisor to the Point Carbon Zero Program.
She continues: “It’s encouraging to see ecosystem players coming together to combine capabilities, resources, and an innovative mindset to tackle the transition problem. While we still have real challenges ahead of us, multistakeholder platforms like the Point Carbon Zero Program are now pushing us and Asia in the right direction for a more sustainable future.”
Anton Ruddenklau, partner and global head of Innovation for Financial Services at KPMG International, adds: “KPMG welcomes our role in the Project Point Carbon Zero Program, where we will identify and scale the best climate fintechs to support this systemic change. Our collective goal is to position Singapore favourably as a digital finance linchpin with a strong stake and influence in sustainable development. This will reinforce the country’s financial services growth and hub reputation.”
