SMBC, Persefoni and IBM Japan have joined forces to roll out a climate management and accounting platform in Japan for companies to better manage their carbon footprint and fulfil climate disclosure requirements.
A strategic partnership between SMBC (T:8316), Persefoni, and IBM Japan aims to improve carbon accounting and decarbonisation strategies for Japanese companies.
The platform is one of many emerging solutions to help alleviate the reporting burden of climate disclosures for companies to ensure TCFD-alignment.
Improving the accuracy of climate disclosures is crucial to inform decarbonisation strategies and manage climate risks.
The new agreement between Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (SMBC), Persefoni and IBM Japan is a strategic collaboration to bring Persefoni’s leading climate management and accounting platform (CMAP) to customers in Japan to meet the new climate disclosure requirements that have been in place since April 2022.
SMBC will also use the platform for their own operations, claiming it is the first multinational financial institution in Japan to do so.
The partnership with IBM will provide another tool to facilitate the automatisation of the data input process into Persefoni’s platform, emission calculation output and reporting processes. The tool, known as IBM Garage methodology, is developed on an integrated one-stop data application infrastructure, which can support the large volume of data gathering and processing needed for emissions calculation, taking away this burden from companies.
This new collaboration builds on the climate risk analysis services that SMBC and IBM Japan have been offering since spring this year with The Climate Service Inc., now a part of S&P Global, to provide a more comprehensive solution to their customers
Persefoni is a leader in the emerging CMAP market
As more and more countries require more comprehensive climate risk and sustainability reporting, companies are looking for solutions that can alleviate the reporting burden and ensure accuracy in their reporting to better manage their carbon footprint and future-proof their business.
Persefoni’s CMAP is said to be one of the most promising approaches to carbon accounting software emerging on the market today, and has dubbed itself the “Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) of Climate”. Analysis by UK-based consultancy Forrester of the top 14 emerging CMAPs found that Persefoni is “best for banks, asset managers, and large multinational companies in need of GHG accounting automation and financial reporting”.
The platform incorporates emission factors globally available and specific to each region, and can calculate Scope 1,2, and 3 emissions in line with the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, a standard setting body to measure and manage emissions, as well as the Partnership for Carbon Accounting Financials (PCAF), a global standard for GHG accounting for the financial industry.
Persefoni claims that their platform is particularly strong in calculating Category 11 (emissions from the use of sold products and services) and Category 15 (emissions from operation of investments and loans) of Scope 3 emissions, often seen as one of the most difficult sets of emissions to calculate. Research suggests that the cash at bank and investments held by corporations can far outstrip their own operational impacts.
The platform also includes a Climate Trajectory Modeling module, which provides companies with a science based target (SBT) compliant tool to create digital model to assist companies in calculating net zero strategies and setting targets, while benchmarking a company’s efforts against other industry and regional peers.
The centralised solution can help companies streamline their data management and reporting to inform their climate disclosures and business models.
