NatWest will help its business customers harness Microsoft's data and AI expertise to calculate and shrink their carbon footprints
NatWest is teaming up with Microsoft to help its business customers slash their carbon emissions, the firms announced today.
The British bank will draw on Microsoft's cloud, data, and AI platforms to help its customers calculate their carbon footprints and understand how and where they can reduce emissions by creating tailored carbon reduction action plans. The new service will be piloted later this year, NatWest said.
The news came as the bank also released the results of research conducted while planning the project, which saw it survey 500 business customers on the challenges they face in meeting their climate ambitions.
Nearly 90 per cent of firms surveyed said that efforts to reduce their indirect emissions, such as those in their supply chains, proved difficult to secure external support for. Meanwhile, 44 per cent said reducing indirect emissions was either 'very challenging' or 'incredibly challenging'. For those businesses that have not begun transitioning towards a net zero emissions model, the biggest barriers to adopting a more ambitious climate strategy were a lack of information and data, and a lack of funding, the research found.
"Tackling climate change is one of the biggest challenges of our time," said NatWest CEO Alison Rose, who has placed tackling climate change at the core of bank's strategy since taking the helm in 2019. "As the leading bank in the UK for businesses, we have a significant responsibility, and the ability, to encourage, enable and to lead the way in the UK to transition to a net zero carbon economy."
NatWest has pledged to make its own operations climate positive by 2025 and to halve the climate impact of its financing activity by 2030. Last year, the bank launched or supported a range of green finance products aimed at helping drive progress towards net zero emissions, including a green mortgage, an electric vehicle charging and technology bundle, and the UK's first transition bond, issued by gas firm Cadent to help fund the upgrading of its networks for the use of hydrogen and other green gases.
Microsoft is similarly pursuing goals to be carbon negative by 2030, and to remove more carbon from the environment than it has emitted since its founding by 2050.
"At Microsoft we grounded our carbon negative strategy in the belief that technology can help solve the world's biggest challenges. We are focused upon pulling all of the levers of influence we have including our operations as a customer, supplier, investor, employer, policy advocate and partner," said Microsoft UK CEO Clare Barclay.