The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and Google Cloud have jointly launched the Point Carbon Zero Programme to drive the innovation, incubation and scaling of climate fintech solutions in Asia over the next three years.
The programme is a collaboration under MAS’ Project Greenprint and seeks to use climate fintech solutions to bolster financial sector access to accurate and granular climate-related data.
This will allow for more efficient deployment of capital towards green and sustainable projects.
Google Cloud will launch an open-source cloud platform dedicated to climate finance anchored in Singapore, which will facilitate the deployment of these climate fintech solutions and their adoption by the financial sector.
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 co-crafted by stakeholders from the financial sector and 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 programme also aims to empower 10,000 multinational corporations and small and medium-sized enterprises to set, track and achieve their sustainability targets.
Shortlisted participants will benefit from mentorship from Google Cloud and funding to further develop their solutions.
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Participants can also leverage the aggregated climate disclosure, environmental and public utilities data that Project Greenprint aims to collect, and over 200 public datasets spanning different sectors that are hosted by Google Cloud.
Additionally, they will be able to access Google Cloud’s Carbon Sense suite, which allows them to track and reduce their own carbon footprint associated with their cloud usage.
New climate-related datasets generated by these solutions can be made available to Project Greenprint’s partners, subject to data owners’ consent.
Dr Darian McBain
“Singapore’s financial and fintech sectors can play a pivotal role in the efficient channeling of private capital toward sustainable projects and businesses focusing on their long-term sustainability impact. 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.”
Dr Darian McBain, Chief Sustainability Officer, MAS
Sherie Ng
“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. 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.”
Sherie Ng, Country Director of Singapore and Malaysia at Google Cloud
Source: MAS