AI in Sustainable Technology

📊 Check out the Sustainability Risk Tool Dashboard! Over 100 tools to compare across climate, transition, and nature risks! As a climate leader who sees firsthand how quickly the risk landscape is shifting, I know how valuable it is for financial institutions to use the right tools.  That’s why I find the dashboard from United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative (UNEP FI) Risk Centre so useful. In my time leading the Risk Programme, I was proud to begin work on the climate risk dashboard, which has grown into the sustainability tool dashboard. This open-access resource offers an overview of more than 100 tools, detailing their features, methodologies and use cases across climate risks, nature and biodiversity, pollution and social risks.  Updated quarterly, it now incorporates insights from UNEP FI’s Climate Risk Landscape Report, giving financial institutions a clearer and more integrated view of the evolving risk tools market. Key functionality includes:  🧩 Classification by risk type to support comparability  🏭 Sectoral coverage from energy to real estate, agriculture and more  📈 Side-by-side comparison to help identify gaps and choose the right tools  🔎 Searchable database of tool descriptions and solutions for targeted use  🌐 Coverage of cross-cutting themes such as biodiversity, water and carbon for holistic assessments Explore the Dashboard here: https://lnkd.in/ebivVmEH  What challenges are you facing in finding the right risk tools? And which ones have been most useful? Share your thoughts in the comments! 

How much is your digital presence costing the planet? If you’ve ever wondered about the environmental impact of your digital life, you’re not alone. Our online habits emails, cloud storage, streaming, and scrolling leave a carbon footprint. But here’s the good news: With a little awareness and effort, we can reduce it. Here’s how I approach measuring and reducing my digital carbon footprint: 📊 Step 1: Start with a baseline Before you make changes, measure where you are now. 🌐 Track your average daily time spent online. 📂 Record the size of your stored files (emails, cloud storage, instant messaging). 🔄 Identify any “digital waste” (like unused apps or duplicate files). 💡 Why this matters: Without understanding your starting point, you can’t measure progress. 🗓️ Step 2: Plan regular checkpoints Evaluate your progress at consistent intervals: -After 1 month, 3 months, and a year, compare your usage data. -Measure how much digital waste you’ve eliminated and how your habits have changed. For example, I’ve started deleting old emails and unsubscribing from unnecessary newsletters. After just a month, my cloud storage size dropped by 20%. 🌱 Step 3: Track your impact Each action contributes to reducing your carbon footprint. -Cutting down on online time? Less energy used by servers. -Decluttering your cloud? Reduced need for data storage infrastructure. -Compressing large files? Lower data transfer emissions. The stats are eye-opening: -A single email with a large attachment can emit up to 50g of CO₂—as much as driving a car for 1km! -Streaming videos accounts for nearly 60% of internet traffic, contributing significantly to global emissions. Making these changes isn’t just about reducing emissions—it’s about rethinking our relationship with technology. Each step feels like a small win for the planet, and it’s rewarding to see measurable results. Have you ever tracked your digital carbon footprint? What steps are you taking to reduce it? #Sustainability #DigitalCarbonFootprint #EcoFriendlyTech #SustainableLiving

Diving into the Climate Fintech Landscape 💡 The emergence of fintech companies focusing on innovative climate solutions has gained significant momentum in recent years. They are offering fresh perspectives to financial institutions and corporations, helping them achieve their climate goals. The rising public interest in sustainability is also driving the introduction of regulations aimed at holding corporations accountable and eradicating greenwashing. 🔎 Bridging the Climate Data Gaps Quality data remains the primary ESG challenge facing financial institutions and investors. Private markets, for instance, offer limited climate disclosures. But change is on the horizon, with firms like Novata and ESG Book targeting this particular asset class and aiming to close that data gap. As we transition from a scarcity to an abundance of ESG data, we face the next challenge: standardising data. 👨💻 Addressing Data Integration Challenges Despite improvements in ESG datasets, a ‘one-stop shop’ does not exist yet. Financial institutions find themselves juggling data from multiple vendors to form a clear picture. This data must then be integrated into their internal systems and technology stack, which is often a complex and time-consuming process. Fintechs like Novisto or WeeFin, however, are addressing this issue by developing data operations platforms. 📊 Streamlining Carbon Management We’ve noticed a surge in carbon accounting start-ups offering intuitive software to help companies measure, reduce, and offset their carbon footprint. The space is very well-funded but crowded; we foresee consolidation and predict success for those with robust data capabilities, flexible technology, and value-add services like Greenly | Certified B Corp and Plan A. 🤖 Assessing and Pricing Climate Risks Climate change is no longer a distant reality. Investment managers face the daunting task of integrating climate change projections to assess risk and return expectations that inform security selection in investment portfolios. A few companies are tackling this space, including Jupiter Intelligence and riskthinking.AI in physical risks and Risilience in transition risks. Financial institutions require robust climate intelligence to help them form sound investment decisions 🌍 Carbon: A New Asset Class Decarbonisation is the critical first step towards achieving net zero. This includes initiatives to cut carbon emissions and investments in carbon credits to offset unavoidable emissions. Sylvera, for instance, helps bridge the gap. Their trusted and unconflicted data is helping asset managers evaluate the net-zero plans of investee companies globally. It also facilitates the development of new sustainable investment products. Source: Fidelity International Strategic Ventures - https://bit.ly/3YQx6W0 #Innovation #Fintech #Banking #Neobanks #OpenBanking #OpenAPIs #FinancialServices #Payments #Credit #Investing #OpenData #ESG #Sustainability 

30% of top global companies lack structured climate data, and for most, the costs of manual data structuring remain prohibitively high. The market needs innovation, especially as climate reporting becomes mandatory. BlackRock's latest research paper introduces an AI system for extracting climate commitments from corporate documents, achieving 95-100% accuracy. The technical approach is elegant in its simplicity, breaking documents into 80-word chunks, using RoBERTa to identify relevant sections, and leveraging LLMs for precise data extraction. An important addition is their multi-stage validation system that includes hallucination checks and semantic deduplication - essential features for production-grade AI systems. While initially tested with Google's PaLM2, the researchers demonstrate comparable performance with GPT-3.5 and GPT-4, suggesting a robust, platform-agnostic solution. However, some limitations: the validation dataset, comprising only 46 companies, is relatively small, and the system's performance on non-standard reporting formats remains untested. As reporting requirements evolve globally, maintaining the system's accuracy will require ongoing refinement. With over 30% of the top 1,000 firms lacking structured climate data, automating climate commitment analysis should improve market transparency while reducing costs, and reducing the barrier to entry. Excellent (and practical) work by Aditya Dave, Mengchen Z., Dapeng Hu, and Sachin Tiwari from BlackRock. PS: HAPPY NEW YEAR! ❤️

🆕 NEW PAPER PUBLISHED: Using AI to assess corporate climate transition disclosures 💚 I'm happy to announce that our paper was published in #Environmental #Research #Communications. The paper presents a blueprint for employing #Large #Language #Models (#LLMs) to analyze corporate climate disclosures in detail and with experts in the loop. We proceed in three steps: 1️⃣ #Framework for #Transition #Plan #Assessments: We build the common ground of 28 transition plan frameworks to create 64 key indicators for evaluating companies' efforts to transition towards net zero. 2️⃣ #Expert #Validation of the corresponding #LLM #Tool: We build an LLM-based tool that can automatically and efficiently analyze disclosures (such as sustainability reports). We validate and improve the tool with domain experts from 26 different institutions, including financial regulators, investors, and NGOs. 3️⃣ #Analysis of the #Most #Carbon #Intensive #Companies: Analysing the highest-emitting companies in the world, we find a gap between "talk" (target setting) and "walk" (strategy implementation). Companies with more disclosures tend to have lower emissions. Similar to commitments towards science-based targets, larger emitters remain more intransparent. 🔗 The paper is here: https://lnkd.in/dJkCjFHV 🌟 The best thing? It is all #open-#source and publicly available. You can use the tool yourself, work with it, and improve it. I even wrote #tutorials for newcomers to the field. So really nothing is stopping you from trying it out. 🔗 Check it out here: https://lnkd.in/dgFPqydB This paper is only possible through a great interdisciplinary collaboration with Chiara Colesanti Senni, Julia Bingler, Jingwei Ni, and Markus Leippold! Feel free to use and provide feedback! University of Zurich | ETH Zürich | University of Oxford #climate #change #NLP

Krista Tukiainen is building an AI engine to scale adaptation finance. (and major asset managers are taking notice) Krista started her career in sustainable finance. But after nearly a decade working with green bond standards, she saw a problem: Everyone was making climate commitments. But no one could agree on what counted — or how to track it. So in 2022, she co-founded ClimateAligned to fix that. Her team's mission: → Automate the messy, manual work of parsing disclosures → Make sustainable finance auditable, scalable, and transparent The tech? A self-serve AI platform that can run bespoke assessments on all kinds of public filings, surfacing decision-useful data for investors, corporates, consultants -- and journalists! Krista's team calls it brief.green I'm using the tool to assess how aligned the world's top 50 banks are with adaptation indicators. One asset manager may use ClimateAligned to create a whole new adaptation-focused fixed income fund. 🎧 Learn more by listening to the full conversation on the latest installment of the Climate Proof podcast: https://lnkd.in/e4veDVde 📩 Subscribe for more deep dives on adaptation finance, tech, and policy: https://lnkd.in/eFDX8kWn

Most of us are walking a tightrope, blindfolded. What if you could see the risks before you fall?: Keeping up with ESG risks is one of the toughest challenges businesses face today. Regulations shift constantly. Trends emerge and evolve. Public sentiment can turn on a dime. And yet, staying ahead of these changes is critical. That’s where AI tools like Datamaran come in. Platforms like Datamaran analyze massive datasets in real time, tracking: Regulatory changes before they impact your business. Emerging ESG trends to help you spot opportunities. Public perception so you can stay in tune with stakeholders. Here’s what the numbers say: Companies using predictive tools reduce compliance risks by 40%. That’s fewer penalties, fewer public setbacks, and a smoother path to achieving ESG goals. Here are three steps to start leveraging AI for ESG: 1. Evaluate AI solutions: Choose platforms that specialize in ESG monitoring, like Datamaran. 2. Automate compliance tracking: Reduce manual effort and focus on insights. 3. Align your teams: Share data across departments to drive smarter decisions. The stakes are high, but the solutions are here. AI helps you lead. With purpose and impact, Mario

Energy is invisible. And that’s the problem. We rarely see how much energy we use - we just notice the bill - sometimes not even that. That’s why most people • overestimate the impact of small visible actions • underestimate what large appliances consume • prioritize recycling over reducing emissions from heating or driving Let’s take a simple example: Heating your dinner in a microwave (5 min) vs. oven (50 min)? That’s 28x less energy. A dryer vs. laptop? Not 3x more — but 100x more. Yet in survey after survey, people rank recycling as their #1 climate action. Why? Because it’s visible, habitual, and feels good. Meanwhile, upgrading insulation, ditching gas, or rethinking laundry use? Out of sight, out of mind. This gap in perception has real consequences: •  Misguided consumer choices •  Weak public support for high-impact policies •  Missed emissions reduction potential If you work in energy, sustainability, or climate: • We need to move beyond awareness and focus on effectiveness. • Teach people how to prioritize impact, not just feel “green.” • Explain that heating and cooling drive residential demand, not phone chargers. • Use rules of thumb: “If it heats or cools, it generally costs more.” And if you’re just trying to do your part - start here: • Lower the thermostat in winter, raise it in summer • Wash with cold water, and line-dry when possible • Upgrade insulation before buying new gadgets • Shift loads to off-peak hours if your utility allows • Read your bill and learn what a kWh is worth We don’t need everyone to be perfect. But we do need everyone to be better informed. Let’s stop guessing. Let’s start changing what actually matters. . . . #EnergyLiteracy #DemandSideSolutions #BehavioralScience #ClimatePolicy #EnergyEfficiency #KWhReality #Electrification #Decarbonization #PublicEngagement #ClimateAction

𝐒𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐛𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐢𝐬𝐧’𝐭 𝐣𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐜𝐨𝐫𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐠𝐲—𝐢𝐭 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐬 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐝𝐚𝐢𝐥𝐲 𝐡𝐚𝐛𝐢𝐭𝐬. What if I told you that simply putting down your smartphone for 2 hours a day could contribute to your organization's Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) goals? 📱 The average smartphone user generates carbon emissions from daily usage, data centers, and device charging. By reducing screen time: 🌱 We lower energy consumption. 📶 Reduce data load on networks (which rely on fossil-fuel-powered infrastructure). 🔋 Extend device life, reducing e-waste and the demand for rare earth minerals. Multiply that by a team, a department, or an entire enterprise—and you create measurable positive impact. 💡 This isn’t about digital detox alone. It’s a micro-habit that aligns with broader ESG initiatives: Environmental: Less energy, less e-waste. Social: More human connection, less digital fatigue. Governance: Promoting responsible tech use. 📣 Leaders—imagine embedding such small, purposeful behaviors into your ESG strategy. Employees want to make a difference; let’s give them actionable ways to do it. #Sustainability #ESG #DigitalWellness #ClimateAction #TechForGood #Leadership #MicroHabits #GreenTech #ResponsibleUse