The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and Google Cloud have jointly launched the Point Carbon Zero Programme on July 26.
The programme, which is a collaboration under MAS’s Project Greenprint, seeks to drive the innovation, incubation and scaling of climate FinTech solutions in Asia. It also seeks to use climate FinTech solutions to boost the financial sector’s access to accurate and granular climate-related data, so that they can deploy capital towards green and sustainable projects more efficiently.
Project Greenprint is a programme under the MAS Green Finance Action Plan where it aims to harness innovation and technology to promote the green finance ecosystem.
As climate FinTech remains a “relatively nascent” sub-segment, the programme aims to catalyse the expected growth of climate FinTech solutions in Asia over the next three years.
To support the programme, Google Cloud will launch the world’s first open-source cloud platform dedicated to climate finance, which will facilitate the deployment of these climate FinTech solutions and their adoption by the financial sector.
Under the programme, FinTech firms and solution providers will be invited to submit “innovative technological” solutions to address a range of climate finance problem statements that are co-crafted by stakeholders from the financial sector and real economy.
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Participants will be invited to deploy their solutions on Google Cloud’s newly-established open-source cloud platform dedicated to climate finance.
“Singapore’s financial and FinTech sectors can play a pivotal role in the efficient channelling of private capital toward sustainable projects and businesses focusing on their long-term sustainability impact,” says Dr Darian McBain, MAS’s chief sustainability officer.
“The effective employment of technology allows us to greatly enhance the quality, availability and comparability of the ESG data needed to facilitate these financial flows, to accelerate our transition to a low carbon economy. We see the Point Carbon Zero Programme as a key enabler for bridging ESG FinTechs, finance, and real economy businesses through a shared data and innovation platform,’ he adds.
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“ESG Programmes are a priority for the majority of organisations across the world, but less than two in 10 of these firms are currently able to measure and optimise their efforts,” says Sherie Ng, country director, Singapore and Malaysia, Google Cloud.
“In collaboration with MAS, the Point Carbon Zero Programme aims to combine the collective powers of the industry with Google Cloud’s capabilities and innovation ecosystem to orchestrate impactful climate action,” she adds. “Our goal is to fuel an international movement – with data enabling and informing green financial flows, to help countries and companies make quantifiable and meaningful progress, and hasten their transition into a carbon-free future.”
“We are in the decade of action on sustainability. The Point Carbon Zero Programme is a great example of the power of combining collaboration and technology to leverage shared ESG data that will drive better, data-driven decision-making,” says Justin Keeble, managing director, global sustainability, Google Cloud.
“Google Cloud provides solutions that propel sustainable practices for our global customers. In working with MAS, we’ll deliver climate finance solutions to help move faster toward a carbon-free future,” he adds.
