MAS and Google Cloud launch Point Carbon Zero Programme to catalyse climate FinTech solutions
30 August 2022
On 26 July 2022, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (“MAS”) announced that MAS and Google Cloud have jointly launched the Point Carbon Zero Programme (“Programme”), a collaboration under MAS’ Project Greenprint. This Programme aims to drive the innovation, incubation and scaling of climate FinTech solutions in Asia, catalysing the expected growth of climate FinTech solutions in Asia over the next three years. The Programme also seeks to use climate FinTech solutions to bolster financial sector access to accurate and granular climate-related data, for more efficient deployment of capital towards green and sustainable projects.
As a start, the Programme will invite FinTech firms and solution providers 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. The press release states that 100 solutions will be shortlisted for further development with 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.
To support the Programme, Google Cloud will launch a world’s first open-source cloud platform dedicated to climate finance, and participants will be invited to deploy their solutions on this platform. Anchored in Singapore, the platform will facilitate the deployment of these climate FinTech solutions and their adoption by the financial sector and enable FinTechs to collaborate with financial institutions to build, host, and scale climate FinTech solutions, using Google Cloud’s carbon neutral infrastructure and data management capabilities.
The key features of the Programme as set out in the press release include:
- Mentorship and funding: Shortlisted participants will benefit from mentorship from Google Cloud and funding to further develop their solutions.
- Access to data: Participants can 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. 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.
Reference materials
The press release is available on the MAS website www.mas.gov.sg.