Accenture, Cervest AI-Powered Platform Addresses Climate Risks

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Accenture and Cervest have partnered to use an artificial intelligence-powered platform that will assess and address climate risks for businesses across industries.

The AI-enhanced climate intelligence platform will be able to deliver immediate up-to-date access to historical, current, and predictive information of combined climate risk to assess vulnerabilities an organization might have. Accenture will combine its environmental, social, and governance (ESG) capabilities with Cervest’s Earth Science AI data modeling as well as its machine learning capabilities through its climate intelligence (CI) platform.

The companies said the collaboration will help businesses and organizations better assess and mitigate asset risk based on different climate scenarios. That will help them better plan for resilience and net-zero strategies while also making climate-related disclosures more transparent.

“As climate-related physical and transition risks become more prevalent, companies need to embed climate considerations into risk mitigation and put effective climate strategy and adaptation at the core of long-term business resilience,” said Vrushali Gaud, managing director of Sustainability Services at Accenture.

The companies said this type of enhanced ability to get information comes at a time when organizations face continued pressure to disclose their climate-related financial risk and increase transparency on their ESG initiatives. According to a recent UN Global Compact-Accenture CEO Study, 62% of CEOs are strengthening their scenario planning and analysis capabilities, and 17% are implementing artificial intelligence for updated risk analysis.

“Not only will unified CI enable organizations to accelerate scenario planning, it will also expand the network of science-backed insights available to make key transactional decisions and meet reporting standards,” said Cervest founder and CEO Iggy Bassi.

Cervest’s climate intelligence platform provides science-based climate risk insights, including exposure metrics and comparable risk ratings. This information can determine combined risk or hazard-specific risk impacted by climate including droughts, flooding, wildfires, or extreme temperatures can have on a business, Cervest said. Cervest has a pre-mapped catalog of more than 600 million assets, and more can be uploaded manually.

Last year, Cervest partnered with Capgemini to similarly help businesses address climate and sustainability risks through science-driven data and AI-based management systems. Accenture has also been enhancing its systems and its AI capabilities have helped businesses such as Colonial Pipeline track energy costs.