Transform our world by understanding it

Sep 26, 2022

2

min read

Steve Eratos, CEO and Founder of Eratos, explains how data and finance are an integral sector of climate tech. Industry Report partner Eratos uses data to help solve carbon problems and decarbonise.

"When most people think ClimateTech they tend to think of direct carbon reduction such as fossil fuel replacement or carbon capture technologies. However, like scope 3 emissions, there exists a category of ClimateTech that are upstream and downstream from those vital technologies that are equally as important to the ecosystem – Data and Finance.

Bringing data and finance into the climate tech stack creates a way to define a path for green growth and fund green projects or ventures accordingly. Data, enabled by technology, offer the unique perspective of fact-based insights into the past, present and future climate. In turn, climate tech ventures can demonstrate their earth-positive credentials to validate offerings and drive green financing and adoption of green offerings by consumers, businesses and the public sector. Downstream, green data can be used to measure and monitor progress, providing accountability to stakeholders and green finance can fund transition and growth opportunities.

Green data allows corporate and investor ecosystems to understand and quantify risks and returns and drive policy and investments ‘green’, simultaneously optimising financial performance. Both the public and private sectors are grappling with managing risks and income streams/returns in the context of a changing climate, and regulation is coming that will compel reporting by our largest institutions of their exposure to it. Data is the antidote to potential “greenwashing”, ensuring that claims of green credentials are supported by verified evidence and real action is codified and implemented.

With ESG reporting increasingly adopted, the need for clean, accurate and consistent data has never been more important. Historically, the challenge of tracking green growth opportunities such as investment, employment and innovation has been the quantum and fragmentation of data. Bringing together green data and finance is key to bridging this gap and holistically providing access in a meaningful way.

At Eratos, we foresaw a major barrier to creating solutions to combat our collective climate problem: access to relevant data, models and expertise at scale. So, we built a platform optimised for physical world data.

By creating context to that data, we are bringing deep understanding to the decisions that are creating the world we want to live in. And by engaging the world’s leading researchers, we are fostering breakthrough scientific products that are assisting our largest institutions create entirely new solutions to manage their transition to low carbon economic business models and away from the physical risks of extreme weather events.

The world is at a critical point which in the last two years has brought it front and centre to government, finance and industry and the global population (who witness firsthand the impacts of climate events). This point of escalation has now brought the green economy benefits to the forefront of policy makers and investors decision making criteria, in a way that can benefit of the planet and humankind.

Data and finance ClimateTech is a way to underpin, measure and validate the green economy to create the pace needed to deliver meaningful change."