As banks deal with increasing pressure from stakeholders and lawmakers to reduce their carbon footprint, automated emissions-tracking software providers stand ready to capitalize.

Environmental sustainability in banking is especially suitable for automation since it is about collecting and analyzing data from activities such as utilities and vehicles, Kate Drew, director of research at CCG Catalyst Consulting Group, told Bank Automation News.

“Today, most of the processes in place are still manual, but we’re starting to see early applications of technology,” Drew said. “For example, the ability to automatically ingest invoices directly from vendors to calculate energy consumption represents a huge leap forward that will take a lot of the burden off of sustainability teams.”

Current greenhouse gas (GHG) protocols measure emissions under three different scopes:  Scopes 1 and 2 measure direct emissions such as transportation or electricity while Scope 3 measures indirect emissions that are a consequence of a company’s activities but occur from sources not controlled by the company, according to the recent report “Environmental Sustainability in Banking: Rising to the Occasion” written by Drew.

Future automation efforts will likely focus on Scope 3 emissions, she said.

The $221 million Climate First Bank has developed its own emissions-tracking software, Marcio deOliveira, chief technology officer and chief digital banking officer, told BAN.

The St. Petersburg, Fla.-based bank is a member of the Partnership for Carbon Accounting Financials (PCAF), a collaboration between financial institutions to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 in accordance with the Paris Climate Agreement.

Reducing GHG emissions for big impacts

PCAF provides a list of areas that banks can address to reduce their GHG emissions, including listed equity and corporate bonds, business loans and unlisted equity, project finance, commercial real estate, mortgages and motor vehicle loans.

To analyze GHG emissions under the PCAF guidelines, Climate First Bank’s subsidiary, OneEthos, a tracking platform provider, leverages Microsoft Azure as its strategic cloud provider and Microsoft’s automation tools, including Azure Logic Apps and Azure Data Factory.

“The technology or innovation at the forefront of our industry that we think could have big impact on the industry in the coming years is the use of distributed ledger to trace emissions across the value chain,” deOliveira told BAN. “It has the potential to be the most effective method to track emissions in a standardized manner at scale.”

Climate First Bank intends to open its APIs to encourage other financial institutions to follow suit, he said.

Other third-party companies, such as France-based Schneider Electric, provide a cloud-based platform called Resource Advisor that runs on AI and robotic process automation. The platform collects data from vendors such as utility providers and automates GHG tracking for banks. It utilizes bots to cover more than 40 global vendors’ invoices and data sources to track emissions, Cristy House, senior client development manager for sustainability business, told BAN.

“We have found that automation will typically account for about 40% of a customers’ required utility vendor data,” House said, agreeing that the future of carbon management software hinges on increased connectivity and collaboration.

While current software focuses mainly on Scope 3 emissions, future solutions will encompass all scopes and other data streams, she said.

“The future evolution of carbon management software will not only address enterprise footprint needs but also product-centric solutions, circularity, biodiversity and traceability challenges,” House added.

Bank Automation Summit Fall 2022, taking place Sept. 19-20 in Seattle, is a crucial event on automation and automation technology in banking. Learn more and register for Bank Automation Summit Fall 2022.