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It’s commonly understood: if you can’t quantify it, managing it becomes a challenge. Precise gauging separates fruitful Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) endeavors from those merely skimming the surface or, worse, feigning green initiatives.
Comprehending your current position is pivotal to charting your journey ahead. ESG standards are advancing, evidenced by 225 fresh or redefined tools crafted in 2021. Astonishingly, by 2025, ESG directives might encompass a third of all managed assets, a staggering $53 trillion. Hence, supplying incontrovertible outcomes to governing bodies, NGOs, industry overseers, and consumers grows paramount.
Regrettably, tallying impact remains an ESG conundrum. A recent inquiry by Harris for Google Cloud reveals a mere 22% of entities officially track their ESG endeavors. This figure marks a 3% decline year-over-year. (Google Infographic here) Such data places leaders in precarious public positions. A whopping 87% expressed yearnings for superior ESG evaluation tools, enabling honed target-setting. This group concedes: the primary greenwashing tactic? Declaring eco-ambitions sans tangible metrics or actionable roadmaps.
The Google Cloud Ready – Sustainability initiative
The Google Cloud Ready – Sustainability initiative aligns with organizations at every stage of their ESG evolution, emphasizing the pivotal role of assessment and methodology. Fundamentally, this initiative thrives on quantification. In its inaugural year, the program has cultivated an expanding alliance of collaborators committed to delivering unbiased and confirmable evaluations in domains such as air purity, carbon emissions, energy usage, and resource allocation
Time Magazine’s top-100 list features Aclima, an entity employing an expansive sensor nexus to monitor our atmosphere and gauge pollutants’ trajectory. Their reach? Billions of detailed pollution metrics, spanning the US and nearly 20 global territories.
BlueSky Resources empowers industries, harnessing Google Cloud’s Airlogic analytics, to gauge and counter methane releases. Presently, they oversee 180 global locales, supplying industries with tangible metrics, offering a diachronic perspective coupled with real-time insights.
Floodbase amalgamates satellite insights and computational intelligence, offering near-instant flood tracking and risk evaluations globally. Within humanitarian and insurance realms, over 30 nations utilize Floodbase, fortifying flood-prone communities.
Floodlight, a geospatial data enterprise, offers an ESG data reservoir, amalgamating sensor data, satellite imagery, and AI insights. Their tools proactively gauge risks like coastal attrition, tempest dangers, drought, and rising sea levels, offering companies a comprehensive environmental risk panorama.
Keen AI, in liaison with Google Cloud, pioneers AI-driven infrastructural energy asset assessments, foreseeing future conditions. This alliance with Google Cloud bestows Keen AI access to tools like Vertex AI, hastening AI solution prototyping and deployment.
Planet integrates almost daily satellite imagery into partner workflows, adapting to our ever-evolving environment. Their archive? A colossal 50 PB of terrestrial data, capturing Earth’s landscapes prolifically.
Sust Global curates climate risk data products. Their dynamic Climate Explorer platform applies advanced AI methodologies to remote-sensed geospatial data, offering a fresh perspective on climate risks. Their Climate Composer API product propels climate-aware risk evaluations across diverse sectors.
UP42, a universal data platform, grants swift access to diverse Earth observation datasets, eradicating access barriers. Their mission? To bolster efforts in reforestation, food preservation, and catastrophe aversion, effecting tangible societal shifts.
Watershed’s enterprise-grade platform, rooted in Google Cloud, provides detailed carbon tracking. Its alliance with Google Cloud refines and accelerates climate data interpretation, bridging business and environmental insights.
Moving Forward in ESG Assessment
For holistic and transparent ESG reporting, detailed, regular metrics are indispensable. Current ecosystems lack a singular entity possessing comprehensive domain knowledge. Therefore, one must enlist adept solution architects, championing impact in their niche, harnessing sustainable cloud insights, and unifying reports for cohesive sustainability contributions.
Metrics sketch the path forward. They’re integral to a thriving sustainability project, forging trust with stakeholders. Google Cloud’s sustainability project’s mission is clear:
“connecting entities to scalable, impactful cloud solutions. Their burgeoning partner network ensures holistic, authoritative reporting”
Peruse Google Cloud’s sustainable solutions on their Partner Directory, Sustainability Partner Advantage page, and, when relevant, their Marketplace. Their aspiration? Assisting clientele in comprehending these tech marvels, pinpointing apt solutions, and expediting their implementation.
