OS Climate Launches Tools to Help Firms, Investors Make Climate-Friendly Decisions

Non-profit OS Climate on Wednesday launched the first in a series of free tools to drive climate-friendly decision making by companies, financial institutions and governments.

As a project of the Linux Foundation, a non-profit technology consortium founded in 2000 that builds open-source software, OS Climate aims to help fill the gaps in data currently preventing capital flowing to the right projects.

It hopes the initial three tools can be used to help funnel the more than $5 trillion in annual climate investment spend that the International Energy Agency says is needed to reach net-zero emissions.

“These tools will generate the refined data and actionable insights needed for pension funds, asset managers, and banks to rapidly align their investments and loans to net zero and resilience goals,” said Truman Semans, CEO of OS Climate.

Academics, non-profits and others can also access the data and use it to conduct their own research.

The Physical Risk & Resilience tool, the development of which was led by French lender BNP Paribas, will allow non-financial stakeholders to assess the climate resilience of assets using its models.

The Climate Portfolio Alignment tool, lead-developed by German insurer Allianz and technology company Red Hat, will help stakeholders align their investments with the world’s goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

The Transitional Analysis tool, developed by airplane maker Airbus, will help companies model, test and conduct scenario analysis to help inform strategic decision making.

“This platform could be a real game-changer. The Linux Foundation’s approach is uniquely able to build public goods that serve a wide range of public interests, ” said Robert Litterman, former chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s (CFTC) climate-related market risk subcommittee.

(Reporting by Simon Jessop; editing by Alison Williams)