The Linux Foundation has announced plans to user AI-enhanced open source analytics and open data to tackle climate risk and opportunity.
Allianz, Amazon, Microsoft and S&P Global have joined the LF Climate Finance Foundation (LFCF) as founding members, while the Foundation's planning team consists of equally credentialled representatives from the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), Ceres and the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB).
The LFCF endeavours to help investors, banks, insurers, corporates, governments, NGOs and academia across industry to share, and build upon tools designed to streamline global climate goals, through a wide-reaching, collaboratice platform. The LFCF will host the OS-Climate platform, consisting of several physical and economic scenarios, a Data Commons that is global and open, and financial models designed to boost predictive analytical tools and investment products.
Speaking recently on the announcement with Finextra TV, Truman Semans CEO and planning team chair, OS-Climate, states: “At the simplest level, the OS-Climate vision is to take the community-based, collaborative, open-source approach that has been really transformative in both the tech and life sciences sectors, and bring that to this perennial challenge of better data and better analytics for climate integrated investing.”
One of the core purposes of adopting this approach, Semans explains, is to create a ‘Switzerland’ style space where competitors can come together to find common ground and share IP, cost, knowledge and resources to jointly build the necessary technology and data layers.
He notes that "because these technologies already exist, encouraging the sharing of these tools means resources aren’t wasted trying to re-invent the wheel".
The project aims to enable asset owners, asset managers and banks to manage climate risk and identify the climate-aligned companies, infrastructure, capital projects and technologies that will thrive in a low-carbon economy.
Semans adds that the demand for such a platform across the board is abundant: “There is a clear call from major pension funds, banks, governments and civil society for public access to corporate climate data and other data needed for finance to support Paris Climate Accord goals, as well as for better tools to inform financial decisions.”
In a press statement covering the launch, Martina Cheung, president, S&P Global Market Intelligence, commented that “businesses and investors are acknowledging the global climatic changes and its impact on the future performance of companies. There is an increasing demand from pension funds, asset managers and governments for climate related data to incorporate into their decision-making.
“Now more than ever, there’s a need for greater company disclosure of climate and environmental data as well as continued advancement in data and analytical tools to better assess climate risks and opportunities.”