Dive Brief:
- Sustainable management consulting firm Sustainserv and ESG reporting company Palau announced a partnership last week that aims to boost companies’ corporate sustainability strategies and reporting efforts by leveraging artificial intelligence.
- The deal will allow sustainability professionals to utilize Palau’s in-house AI platform, which includes templates for reporting aligned with frameworks from the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, Global Reporting Initiative, International Sustainability Standards Boards and others. Palau said its platform is designed to support ESG data management and “improve both the quality and consistency across different frameworks.”
- Palau’s platform enables companies to collect emissions data and review and analyze disclosures at scale. The company said the AI-powered tool allows users to quickly generate risk summaries, based on uploaded data and their selected reporting standard, and offers a virtual assistant that can answer questions on investors, suppliers and reporting requirements.
Dive Insight:
The partnership builds on Sustainserv’s ongoing investments in tech innovation and doubles down on its “commitment to staying at the forefront of sustainability services in a rapidly evolving digital and regulatory landscape,” according to a July 22 release.
The sustainability consulting firm said its team will work closely with Palau to accelerate and improve the quality of ESG reporting by automating tasks such as pulling data from documents, evaluating gaps and distinctions between frameworks and drafting disclosures and reports. Both companies said they are dedicated to developing “future-facing” sustainable tech solutions.
“AI represents the future of corporate sustainability strategy, data, and reporting efforts,” Sustainserv Managing Partner Matthew Gardner said in the release. “The Palau team sits at the forefront of this rapidly evolving field, and we are proud to launch this partnership that will allow us to increase the efficiency and quality of our clients ESG disclosure and reporting processes.”
In a piece for ESG Dive last year, Gardner wrote that tools such as generative AI “hold great promise” when it comes to transforming ESG data collection processes as reporting requirements “become more complex and cumbersome.” While the Sustainserv executive and co-founder stressed on the importance of using technology to ease companies’ data collection and compliance burdens as it is a “key part of the solution,” he added that human contribution is just as important for reliable ESG data collection.
“Systems that operate completely independent of human intervention are not readily available to meet growing needs and demands from the ESG reporting community,” Gardner said.
