MAS and Google Cloud launch the Point Carbon Zero program to catalyze climate FinTech solutions

by James · July 25, 2022

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and Google Cloud have on Tuesday jointly launched the Point Carbon Zero program to drive innovation, incubation and scaling of climate FinTech solutions in Asia.

Both parties said in a statement that the program is a collaboration under MAS’ Project Greenprint and seeks to use climate FinTech solutions to strengthen the financial sector’s access to accurate and granular climate-related data, for more efficient distribution of capital to green and sustainable projects.

To support the program, Google Cloud will launch the world’s first open source cloud platform dedicated to climate finance, which will facilitate the implementation of these climate FinTech solutions and their adoption in the financial sector.

According to the statement, despite FinTech accounting for over 50 percent of all start-up investments globally, climate FinTech is still a relatively nascent sub-segment. The program therefore aims to catalyze the expected growth of climate FinTech solutions in Asia over the next three years.

As a start, FinTech firms and solution providers will be invited to submit innovative technological solutions to address a range of climate finance problem statements created by stakeholders from the financial sector and the real economy.

100 solutions will be shortlisted for further development and tested with a pool of 1,000 financial institutions on their ability to facilitate capital flows towards green and sustainable projects in Asia.

The program also aims to give 10,000 multinational companies and small and medium-sized enterprises the opportunity to set, track and achieve their sustainability goals.

The main functions of the program are:
● Mentorship and funding – Shortlisted participants will benefit from Google Cloud mentorship and funding to further develop their solutions.
● Access to data – Participants can benefit from the aggregated climate disclosure, environmental and public data that Project Greenprint aims to collect, and over 200 public data sets spanning different sectors hosted on Google Cloud. Such data can be used to refine the accuracy of participants’ solutions to measure carbon emissions at the sector and company level, as well as the impact of companies’ efforts to reduce them.
● Manage your own carbon footprint – Participants can access Google Cloud’s Carbon Sense suite, which allows them to track and reduce their own carbon footprint associated with their cloud usage.
● Facilitate data sharing – New climate-related data sets generated by these solutions can be made available to Project Greenprint’s partners, subject to data owner consent. This is in line with MAS’ aim to facilitate reliable and efficient streams of high quality sustainability data, to support financial institutions’ sustainable finance and investment decisions.

Participants will be invited to deploy their solutions on Google Cloud’s newly established open source cloud platform dedicated to climate finance. Based in Singapore, the platform will enable FinTechs to partner with financial institutions to build, host and scale climate FinTech solutions, using Google Cloud’s carbon-neutral infrastructure and data management capabilities.

“Singapore’s financial and FinTech sectors can play a central role in effectively channeling private capital towards sustainable projects and businesses that focus on their long-term sustainability impact. The effective use of technology allows us to greatly improve the quality, availability and comparability of the ESG data necessary to facilitate these economic flows, to accelerate our transition to a low carbon economy,

“We see the Point Carbon Zero program as an important enabler to bridge ESG FinTechs, finance and real economy businesses through a shared data and innovation platform,” said Darian McBain, Chief Sustainability Officer, MAS.

Meanwhile, Google Cloud Singapore and Malaysia country director Sherie Ng said environmental, social and governance (ESG) programs are a priority for most organizations worldwide, but less than two in ten of these firms are currently able to measure and optimize their efforts.

“In partnership with MAS, the Point Carbon Zero program aims to combine the collective forces of industry with Google Cloud’s capabilities and innovation ecosystem to orchestrate impactful climate action. Our aim is to drive an international movement – with data that enables and informs green financial flows, to help countries and companies make quantifiable and meaningful progress, accelerating their transition to a carbon-free future, she said.

Google Cloud Global Sustainability CEO Justin Keeble said the Point Carbon Zero program 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.

“Google Cloud offers solutions that promote sustainable practices for our global customers. Working with MAS, we will deliver climate finance solutions to help us move faster towards a carbon-free future, he said.