Public AI tools in sustainable finance
Most AI applications in the field of (sustainable) finance are developed in house by asset and wealth managers, or by specialized service providers, and are not publicly accessible.
A few AI tools, though, are widely accessible and without charge. We have listed our curated selection of such tools here, which can be helpful for market participants which do not have inhouse AI capabilities yet, for example to improve investment due diligence.
askClimate (TCFD alignment assessment)
askClimate is an initiative of the University of Zurich, available as an online tool. The user can upload a public corporate sustainability report and obtain from askclimate a conformity assessment of this report against TCFD recommendations. AskClimate also supports customized analysis via user question answering. The final output includes the conformity score to TCFD guidelines, the report summaries according to the eleven TCFD aspects, answers to user's questions, and traceable sources for all answers.
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MALENA (Due Diligence support)
MALENA is an initiative of the International Finance Corporation, available as an online tool. It is an AI-powered analyst that extracts insights from reports and other data sources related to a specific company (e.g. financial reports, news, corporate sustainability reports). It allows financial services companies to screen annual, sustainability, integrated, and impact reports and other ESG-related disclosures, and support their due diligence processes. The IFC has made a simple version of MALENA available for free.
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AskNature (TNFD alignment assessment)
askNature is an initiative of the University of Zurich, available as an online tool. The user can upload a public corporate sustainability report and obtain from askNature a conformity assessment of this report against TNFD recommendations. The tool analyzes disclosures according to the double materiality principle, classifying company actions based on their impact direction (company-to-nature, nature-to-company, or neutral). Sentiment analysis is applied to assess whether impacts are positive or negative. The main benefit is improved transparency and more informed decision-making for stakeholders by providing a more comprehensive and nuanced assessment of corporate environmental impacts than is currently available through voluntary disclosures
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RETScreen (assessing energy projects)
Developed by the Government of Canada with a number of partners, is a software to help companies take decisions related to energy projects, including renewable energy, energy efficiency, and cogeneration. Combined with a number of databases, including global climate data from NASA satellites, the RETScreen software helps determine if a proposed energy project makes financial sense. RETScreen is used by the public and private sectors to help analyze, plan, implement and monitor energy projects, and by universities and colleges worldwide for teaching and research.
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Any suggestion, comment or question? Reach out to Romain Leroy-Castillo, Director & Artificial Intelligence lead at SSF
