Sustainable Finance
The transition to a sustainable global economy will be the most capital-intensive transition in human history. ‘Sustainable finance’ or ‘Green finance’ is about aligning the financial system with global sustainability. This includes
- Integrating current and future financial risks and opportunities from climate, environmental, social and governance factors into mainstream financial decision making (= Greening Finance)
- Organising and motivating the investment required to transition to global sustainability or mobilising private finance for clean and resilient growth (= Financing Green)
Sustainable finance brings together different areas of UK has expertise, such as financial services, data analytics and low carbon technology innovations.
Why Satellite Data
Investors are increasingly looking to understand the sustainability credentials of the businesses they invest in. To do so, they typically rely on companies’ self-disclosed annual reports, if these are available at all. This type of reporting is voluntary which means it is often incomplete, incomparable and outdated by the time it is published. Satellite data can provide a neutral, consistent and timely source of information to support investors with:
- Climate change related risks and opportunities assessments
- Environmental, social and governance (ESG) risks and impacts assessments
- Monitoring and verification for sustainable financial products
Our Sustainable Finance Programme
The Satellite Applications Catapult aims to activate this global, high growth market by:
- Promoting the benefits of satellite technologies within the finance sector to stimulate demand for geospatial solutions
- Supporting UK organisations develop geospatially enabled products and services tailored to the finance sector
- Enabling multidisciplinary research, collaborations and partnerships to accelerate the uptake of geospatial analysis across the finance sector
Spatial Finance Initative
The Spatial Finance Initiative has been established to bring together research capabilities in space, data science, and financial services to make them greater than the sum of their parts. The Initiative is designed to be a funnel, undertaking and coordinating world-leading academic research and channelling these into real-world finance-related applications. The Initiative has been established by the Alan Turing Institute, Green Finance Initiative, Satellite Applications Catapult, and the University of Oxford. It is a multi-disciplinary multi-stakeholder project.
Market Intelligence
Sustainable Finance is a broad market that covers all the players and structures of our financial system and links them up with a broad range of sustainability considerations.
Within this section, we have highlighted some relevant 3rd party reports that introduce a range of topics where high-quality data is extremely important and where there are various opportunities for satellite data to add value.
Sustainable Finance Blogs
Understanding and Monitoring Natural Capital and The Opportunity for Geospatial Solutions
Even if they don’t realise it, most businesses derive benefit from the natural world and are exposed to risk where these are degraded. Where investment decisions don’t factor in natural capital impacts and risk exposure, the result can be disastrous, both for business and for people.
Click here to readGrowing Sustainable Finance – the Opportunity for Geospatial Solutions
Sustainable Finance is becoming increasingly relevant as our economic activities, fuelled by a global finance sector, keep reaching and breaching the natural and social boundaries of our planet. More and more institutional investors recognize environmental, social and governance factors as drivers of value, making sustainable investing the new normal. But, what is Sustainable Finance, why is it important, and what role can geospatial data play to grow its reach?
Click here to readThe UK Government’s Green Finance Strategy and the Opportunity for Geospatial Solutions
Climate change, the depletion of our natural resources, and the rapid decline of biodiversity are the major global issues of our time. On the global stage, the UK is taking the lead and raising ambitions to tackle these issues.
Click here to readSustainable finance reporting frameworks and the opportunity for geospatial data
The sustainable finance ecosystem is as vast and as complex as the overall finance sector that it is a part of. One way for data and service providers to understand the type of information this sector needs is to look at the different reporting standards and frameworks that the industry has created to standardise the sustainability related information it receives from corporates and investment projects.
Click here to read
Event Recording
At this webinar, Christophe Christiaen, Sustainable Finance Lead at the Satellite Applications Catapult, introduced some of the trends and opportunities that are driving the demand for better data within the finance sector, the financial data value chain and the challenges associated with current (sustainability) data and solutions. He also explored existing, under-served and future use cases for earth observation data within finance. Finally, he highlighted some relevant materials, events, and opportunities to start engaging with the sustainable finance sector.
