Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF) Joins Linux Foundation’s OS-Climate to Drive Trust & Transparency in Open-Source Climate Data and Analytics Solutions
OS-Climate publishes related whitepaper on Solving Entity Matching Challenges in support of Climate-Aligned Investing
SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., December 14, 2022 – Today, OS-Climate announced that Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF) has joined its fast-growing community of Fortune 500 businesses, financial services firms, academic institutions, and non-profit organizations who are jointly building a public platform of open data and open-source decision-making tools for accelerating the global transition to Net Zero.
“GLEIF strongly advocates the availability and usage of the LEI to support transparency in global sustainability initiatives, and the LEI has recently been recognized by global business influencers as supporting the G20’s sustainability agenda.” said Stephan Wolf, CEO at GLEIF. “It therefore fits perfectly that we become a member of OS-Climate. As an active participant of this open-source community, we have strong credentials that will allow us to collaborate in the realization of OS-Climate’s goal: to build a data and software platform that boosts global capital flows into climate change mitigation and resilience. GLEIF is the guardian of the LEI, a universal entity identification standard, as well as the records and underlying network that enables responsible interactions between legal entities worldwide. As such, we look forward to contributing our expertise in trusted entity identification to OS-Climate and exploring ways in which our high-quality LEI data sets can continue to further accelerate data-driven climate aligned investing.”
OS-Climate is a member-driven, non-profit organization hosted by the Linux Foundation, the largest host of open-source initiatives globally. OS-Climate is committed to the development of an open data and open-source analytics platform focused on managing climate risk and accelerating investment in low-carbon and resilient solutions.
Since November 2021, GLEIF’s LEI datasets, hosted in an open data catalogue by Amazon’s Sustainability Data Initiative (ASDI), have been leveraged by OS-Climate’s Entity Matching project. The Entity Matching project’s goal to link real-world company records from open datasets for ESG analysis, driving broader and faster development of climate-aligned financial applications.
Truman Semans, CEO and Founder of OS-Climate, said “In the context of our initiative, matching data using GLEIF’s LEI and other open datasets is a key element in building high quality analytics systems that assess companies’ progress relative to their commitments to Net Zero and other climate-aligned investment goals.” Unfortunately, the lack of a mandated, global common identifier in the corporate world creates many challenges to linking company records solely on non-standardized, country-specific ID’s or cumbersome textual data. On 10-November at COP27, OS-Climate’s Entity Matching project leads, Rui Dias Morais and Patrycia Barros Pereira from BNP Paribas, published a whitepaper on how the team is working to solve this complex problem.
In addition to supporting the work of OS-Climate, making LEI datasets publicly available on ASDI served as a catalyst for innovative LEI use in sustainability initiatives of the future, bringing with it the opportunity for LEIs to further their influence – as encouraged by the G20, the Financial Stability Board and regulators worldwide – as a tool of broad public good.
The value of the LEI in supporting the G20’s sustainability agenda has recently been recognized in a report published by leading global business community influencers (the B20, Business in OECD and IoE). The LEI is recognized for its capacity to reduce costs and fragmented approaches across borders for the business community and help set the stage for better risk management information in the future.
About OS-Climate
Founded in 2018, OS-Climate is a member-driven, non-profit Community of Practice & Action, hosted by the Linux Foundation (LF). OS-Climate’s members include Allianz, Amazon, BNY Mellon EY, Federated Hermes, Goldman Sachs, London Stock Exchange Group, the Net Zero Asset Owner Alliance, Ortec Finance, Red Hat, S&P Global, Climate Policy Institute, Ecole Polytechnique de Paris, OpenEarth Foundation, GLEIF, and World Benchmarking Alliance.
About the Linux Foundation
Founded in 2000, the Linux Foundation and its projects are supported by more than 2,950 members. The Linux Foundation is the world’s leading home for collaboration on open source software, hardware, standards, and data. Linux Foundation projects are critical to the world’s infrastructure including Linux, Kubernetes, Node.js, ONAP, Hyperledger, RISC-V, and more. The Linux Foundation’s methodology focuses on leveraging best practices and addressing the needs of contributors, users, and solution providers to create sustainable models for open collaboration. For more information, please visit linuxfoundation.org.
