Hey everyone! Luke (CCO) here writing about New York Climate Week! Juggling the time zones is only eased by endless blockades of the NY grid system, and the many, many events being hosted across the city somehow managing to run like clockwork. Following a morning spent networking at the Nest, I was fortunate to join 100 sustainability practitioners from enterprise, financial services, the public sector, and tech start/scale up’s at the launch of Climate IQ. This is an open-sourced data platform tackling the fundamental challenge of scaling accessibility and credibility of physical climate data.
It takes existing physics associate with flooding and heat or temperature, overlaying it with a simple user interface much like google maps / earth. Incidentally it is a Google.org venture in partnership with the City of New York, and the mission is to be free and accessible to any enterprise. It was great to participate in event facilitated by like-minded sustainability tech leaders, who understand that the scale of the sustainability challenge, rests on scaling access to sustainability solutions.
Using New York is an initial test example, the product is now expanding pilots into Copenhagen, Atlanta and Phoenix. AI continues to be the critical lever necessary for bridging the gap between science, government policy, decision making and the private sector. Moving across into the evening, I continued to be humbled in joining similar sized audiences, rich in knowledge and solutions mind sets. An incredible set of fireside discussions were then hosted in the Times Square Tower, covering alternatives to carbon accounting and how data, the internet of things and AI can accelerate sustainability strategies.
Sustainability is such a vastly comprehensive yet early and nascent field, that as it has exploded post Covid-19, anyone can easily forget. Concepts like materiality, driven by the Global Reporting Initiative and the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board initially began to outline how essentially everything was material – cyber to waste, health and safety to employee inclusion – but isn’t that misguided? The concept of Scope 3 is not intended to be used as an, “everything else not 1 or 2, or out with your control, or even to make sure you’re fully covered”, it was duly to highlight the ambiguity and difficulty in utilising financial accounting practices for something like greenhouse gas (itself a moving yet young field).
More urgently we need to rapidly appreciate that the greenhouse gas accounting methodology (GHPG) is not ‘catch all’ and that what an enterprise uses, will always be different from infrastructure like oil, gas or other non-renewable, or even extractive industry, and of course financial entities. Therefore, attempts to automate the data, systems, controls, and integrity (either using AI or not) need to be on a much more considered and unique basis. With a plethora of sustainability (or pure play carbon) accounting platforms being invested in (up to the billion-dollar valuation) it might be easy for an investor or customer to overlook the GHGP is a corporate greenhouse gas accounting standard. Two groups talked through alternatives to carbon accounting for valuation and focused on hard to abate sectors like agriculture and waste management.
We have a packed agenda which we’re excited about. If you’re in town and want to meet with Rio’s Commercial team, drop us a message, we will be at The Nest until Thurs and fringe sponsored panels and events to midday Friday.
Luke