The Linux Foundation said today it’s stepping up its efforts to tackle climate change with the launch of the LF Climate Finance Foundation.

The initiative has been established to provide artificial intelligence-based, open source analytics and data to academia, banks, companies, insurers, investors, governments and nongovernmental organizations to help them address climate risk and opportunities, the Linux Foundation said. Its founding members include Allianz SE, Amazon.com Inc., Microsoft Corp. and S&P Global.

The LFCF says its members will work together to create an “OS-Climate platform,” which will consist of “multiple physical and economic scenarios, a global and open Data Commons and economic and financial models that accelerate predictive analytic tools and investment products that manage climate-related risk and finance climate solutions across every geography, sector and asset class.”

The OS-Climate platform’s main goal is to help stakeholders better account for the massive investment needed to fight climate change. It cites an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report that says avoiding catastrophic levels of global warming will require at least $1.2 trillion of additional financing for new climate solutions each year.

“Achieving this dramatic increase in investment requires better data and analytic tools to fully account for climate-related risk and opportunity,” the LFCF said. “The LFCF is building the OS-Climate platform, with the goal of enabling asset owners, asset managers and banks to manage climate risk and identify the climate-aligned companies, infrastructure, capital projects and technologies that will thrive in a low-carbon economy.”

The LFCF says banks and investors could use the OS-Climate platform to analyze portfolios and individual investments. Meanwhile, governments are expected to use the platform to guide their investments in resilient infrastructure, develop more effective policies and enable regulators to manage market-related climate risk.

Researchers could benefit too, by using the platform to surface more insights that can advance scalable climate opportunities. As for investors and NGOs, the platform could help them to advocate more effectively for corporations to align with the goals of the Paris Accord.

Development of the platform is already well underway. For example, the Science-Based Targets Initiative has already announced the beta version of its open-source Finance Tool that’s being co-developed by OS-Climate and Ortec Finance. The LFCF says it will integrate the Finance Tool into the OS-Climate platform.

“The cost and complexity of analytics for climate-related investments require highly organized collaboration and resource sharing across hundreds of users and contributors,” Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation, said in a statement. “The LF Climate Finance Foundation will enable neutral governance, shared development costs and technical leadership from many of the world’s leading financial institutions, multilateral organizations, academia, governments and NGOs.

image: cocoparisienne/Pixabay