MAS, Google Cloud jointly launch Point Carbon Zero Programme

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and Google Cloud have jointly launched the Point Carbon Zero Programme, which seeks to drive the innovation, incubation and scaling of sustainable fintech in Asia.

The programme is a collaboration under MAS’ Project Greenprint, which aims to use climate fintech to improve the financial sector’s access to accurate and granular climate-related data. This will allow the sector to deploy capital more efficiently towards green and sustainable projects.

As part of the programme, Google Cloud will launch an open-source cloud platform dedicated to climate finance, which will facilitate the deployment of technologies and their adoption by the financial sector.

According to MAS, the programme’s key features are:

• Mentorship and funding – shortlisted participants will benefit from mentorship from Google Cloud and funding to further develop their solutions
• Access to data – Participants can utilise 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. Such data can be used to hone the accuracy of participants’ solutions in measuring sectoral and corporate-level carbon emissions, as well as the impact of firms’ efforts to reduce these
• Manage 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 datasets generated by these solutions can be made available to Project Greenprint’s partners, subject to data owners’ consent. This is in keeping with MAS’ goal of facilitating trusted and efficient flows of high-quality sustainability data, to support financial institutions’ sustainable finance and investment decisions

“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,” said Darian McBain, chief sustainability officer, MAS. “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.”

“We are in the decade of action on sustainability,” said Justin Keeble, managing director for global sustainability at Google Cloud. “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. 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.”