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Listen to the thoughts of a leading European climate VC who are targeting a gigatonne impact in emissions reductions through investing in early stage climate startups and cutting edge innovations within the Energy, carbon removal, insurance, food systems and other sectors.

Materiality was again in the spotlight recently with launch of IFRS sustainability disclosure standards S1 & S2. Whilst the standards were generally welcomed as a significant step in creating a global baseline for corporate sustainability disclosures grounded in the best practices of accounting standards it was seen as controversial in some quarters. In a large part this was due to its approach to dealing with materiality and more specifically ‘double materiality’ — something largely avoided in the standards according to critics. Proponents highlight the mantra that “what can be measured can be managed” when suggesting that focusing on single materiality / materiality should be the priority for disclosing organisations and is thus the focus of these standards. Double materiality encompasses not just sustainability risks which impact a company’s financial performance but the degree to which that company’s products and activities impact the wider world — a philosophy more adopted in European standards such as in the work of EFRAG.

Trase data estimates where a trader (and, by proxy, downstream companies that are customers of that trader) has significant exposure to a biome that is on a financial institutions’ exclusion list, subject to specific bank policy requirements (such as certification), or more broadly deemed an environmentally ‘sensitive’ location requiring more detailed screening.

At Neural Alpha, we have been thinking about Air and Water pollution at sea. This notoriously challenging topic to track has profound ESG implications. Our new product, Responsible Capital News Screen, examines news stories worldwide (and at sea!) to identify reported ESG Events, such as bilge dumping, oil spills or stranded vessels. News screen identifies mentioned physical assets as well as their owners, enabling ESG professionals within asset management, banking and corporates to incorporate news flow into universe construction, monitoring & engagement, due diligence / screening and risk management requirements at scale without compromising on precision and context.

This blog is the first in a monthly series of free to subscribe newsletters covering the month’s most significant global ESG events, achievements, announcements, incidents, scandals and controversies powered by Responsible Capital News Screen. News Screen is an innovative, new data product launched by the team at Neural Alpha enabling ESG professionals within asset management, banking and corporates to incorporate news flow into universe construction, monitoring & engagement, due diligence / screening and risk management requirements at scale without compromising on precision and context. News Screen covers not only negative news flow but also positive news flow with reference to major company achievements, discoveries, inventions and other sustainability solutions covered by our models.

Paraguay is often overlooked in the deforestation debate despite hosting some of the highest rates in the world over the past decade. For 2019, Trase tracked over 200,000 hectares of deforestation associated with beef and soy exports in 2019 – an area larger than Greater London. This low profile has resulted in too little scrutiny of the finance linked to soft commodity trade and allowed financial institutions to skimp on the type of country and biome level policy commitments often applied to higher profile locations.

ESG Investing Awards Winners & Finalists 2023

In October 2018, we launched the pilot Green FinTech Challenge to support innovation and growth in the green finance sector as part of the Government’s Green Great Britain Week.

Some of the world's biggest investors have been linked to deforestation of crucial habitats like the Amazon Rainforest. Can they use their financial might to stop deforestation in its tracks?

This nightmare can often seem a million miles away, but its implications for us all will be profound

Consumers and investors demand to know the provenance of purchases and investments

In this webinar, Ben Levett discusses how to apply deforestation due diligence guidance and how Trase Finance data products can power commodity trader assessments.

In this webinar hosted by ISKO, Neural Alpha founder James Phare and ESG Researcher Dan Burke-Ward discuss the role of taxonomies in sustainable finance and how the Neural Alpha product suite centralises taxonomies for interoperability and reporting and the connection of various data types.

In this webinar, Ben Levett discusses why location-specific analysis is so important for proper deforestation due diligence and outlines how Trase Finance can help conduct TNFD LEAP-FI style assessments of commodity traders.

As part of UKSIF's Good Money Week, Planet Tracker and Trase Finance come together to explore what actions investors and lenders can take to mitigate the risk of financing deforestation, with the case study of the Gran Chaco.

In this webinar Neural Alpha CEO James Phare joined partners OpenCorporates to discuss the importance of open company data in due diligence and other requirements.

It is critical that institutional investors take action to halt the global loss of biodiversity. In this session James Phare presented alongside UNPRI, UNEP-WCMC & Caisse des Dépôts Group practical guidance, data and software tools investors can use to identify and manage spatially explicit natural capital risks within their portfolios.

Employing our strong data engineering and data integration capabilities, Neural Alpha helped to deliver the Orbitas platform and landmark report on the climate transition risks of agriculture.

Working with a number of global partners, Neural Alpha led the development and data engineering on the novel supply chain mapping behind the inaugural Plastic Waste Makers Index.

Utilising our expertise in knowledge graphs, supply chains and sustainability, Neural Alpha was the obvious choice to help Refinitiv explore proof of concept applications of their Big Open Linked Data (BOLD) platform to ESG use-cases

Showcasing our ability to deliver sophisticated backend infrastructures, Neural Alpha delivered the database, ETLs and API powering Lucida’s advanced supply chain and deforestation analysis.

RC ESG Taxonomy provides an enterprise-grade ESG Data Strategy solution, integrating diverse data sources through an AI Language Model, human curation, and a professionally researched taxonomy, enabling ESG professionals to easily access, analyse, and align data with global standards and frameworks.

Discover how Neural Alpha, in partnership with Vivid Economics (McKinsey) and Natural History Museum (NHM) have developed a cutting-edge geospatial dataset. This transformative resource connects companies to physical assets, enabling rapid analysis of ESG risks like biodiversity intactness.