Singapore – Scope3, the pioneer of data-led solutions to decarbonise media and advertising, has launched universal access to industry emissions data on their platform to increase visibility into digital advertising’s carbon emissions.

The launch also represents a significant departure from the industry’s previously fragmented approach to decarbonisation.

The Scope3 platform centralises sustainability data and visualises the millions of metric tonnes of carbon output emitted into the earth’s atmosphere every year from digital advertising. It is specially engineered to account for the highly complex and interconnected digital ad ecosystem.

Furthermore, it exposes opportunities that exist to decrease industry’s impact on the climate crisis by employing the same dataset to measure emissions and drive industry-wide decarbonisation.

With Scope3 providing greater visibility into the carbon footprint of the digital advertising ecosystem, it aims to align industries, push reduction, and become a catalyst for change.

The grant for universal access to the platform data will allow users to explore carbon emissions metrics for millions of digital media properties, including inventory across web domains, mobile apps, and connected TV devices.

Additionally, users can access digital media property reports on emission metrics, track carbon emission changes on online media properties, explore detailed supply path maps, monitor emissions on specific digital media properties, and view comparative ranking metrics across industries. 

The data visualised in the platform is powered by the Scope3 emissions model. Built using Scope3’s open-source methodology, the model also sits at the core of every one of its emissions reduction solutions and research insights papers.

Aside from this, the launch of the data access initiative on its platform is expected to drive trust as it gives industry the power to explore the data firsthand, transparency with the data available to almost anyone, and usability as the data is updated and reliable.

Anne Coghlan, COO and co-founder at Scope3, said, “The first step to tackling rising carbon emissions is ensuring the industry has access to concise and reliable measurement. We need to have a full understanding of the problems created by the digital advertising supply chain in order to identify the most impactful opportunities for reduction.”

She added, “By putting insights into the hands of everyone, there’s no excuse for inaction. Only through this kind of collaborative effort can we drive systemic change to rebuild towards a more ethical, responsible, and sustainable internet.”

Indonesia – DBS Foundation, an endeavour from DBS Bank to make a great impact in addressing Asia’s evolving social needs, has launched a new grant programme to support SMEs looking to kickstart their transition towards becoming more sustainable businesses. 

This new programme is an extension of the DBS Foundation’s ongoing support for social enterprises (SEs), as it endeavours to foster the growth of businesses-for-impact, which is defined as businesses with dual bottom lines of profit and impact, regardless of their stage of growth.

The new grant programme is in search of SMEs, which are incorporated in Indonesia, as well as in Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and India, with innovative sustainability solutions. Their proposals should address at least one of the following areas, namely reducing energy consumption, reducing waste, or sustainable supply chains.

The grant awardees will be receiving a grant amount of up to IDR1,051,405,196, a structured mentorship and advisory support, where DBS Foundation and the DBS SME Banking team will work with each SME awardee to map out key milestones and impact outcomes across a two-year horizon, and support from broader DBS franchise to help promising grant awardees to scale their businesses, including a range of working capital, supply chain financing, and digital transformation solutions.

Joyce Tee, the group head of SME banking at DBS and the board member of DBS Foundation, shared that while their engagement with SME owners has revealed their keen interest in adopting more sustainable business models, they are often caught up with operational matters and may lack the bandwidth or resources to begin. 

“This is a gap that the DBS Foundation aims to fill with the new SME Grant Programme, which will help SMEs take their first step towards transforming into businesses for impact. Beyond grant funding, DBS will also avail our suite of sustainable financing solutions, ecosystem platforms and advisory services to help the most promising SME awardees accelerate their transformation efforts,” said Tee.