As the climate emergency accelerates, with attendant environmental and societal impacts and Net Zero obligations on countries, companies and communities, the multi-trillion dollar question remains: How do we secure and mobilise the significant and continuing investment required every year to achieve environmental sustainability goals in ways that present economic opportunities?

The answer, increasingly, lies at the intersection of ever-advancing digital technology and traditional financial markets infrastructure. At this year’s inaugural businessabc Global AI Summit in London, event partner ZERO13 showcased its flagship sustainability platform offering, purpose-built to revolutionise the green real-world asset (RWA) landscape.

ZERO13 leverages AI, blockchain, and hybrid finance solutions to unlock climate capital flows and create a transparent, efficient and liquid global market for climate and nature finance investment products and services.

“With ZERO13, we’re not plugging technology into a broken system, we’re rearchitecting climate finance from the ground up. By integrating AI and blockchain with purpose, we’re turning climate assets into investible, high-integrity instruments that foster water, energy, food, and financial security.”
Hirander Misra, Chairman & CEO, ZERO13

Navigating the Seven Cs

Climate, Capital, Carbon, Communities, Companies, Countries, Connectivity

Underpinning ZERO13’s business strategy and operating model is our firm belief that effective climate action must connect and serve multiple stakeholders from project owners and adjacent communities to capital financiers and institutional investors. It also recognises that not all things are equal in terms of the impact of climate change in different parts of the world and the associated investment levels required to meet Net Zero and sustainability goals.

The fact is that Global South countries are disproportionately impacted by increasing climate levels, particularly with respect to food, water and energy security. This results not only in them suffering greater environmental consequences but also getting the short straw in terms of climate capital allocation (and investment). Addressed adequately, Global South countries can not only address their own growing needs, but provide their resources to the Global North in ways that realise economic benefit for all concerned.

Our first of its kind climate fintech platform-as-a-service ZERO13 ecosystem is designed to unify traditionally siloed market participants, including exchanges, project developers and investment communities, as well as integrating other service layers (e.g. registries and custodians) across jurisdictions.

In essence, it facilitates tokenisation, monetisation and transparent settlement of green real-world assets, including carbon credits, renewable energy, water rights and agroforestry-linked yields, in addition to helping to decarbonise activities such as mining.

Specifically, ZERO13’s strategy and mission are aligned with key UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 6, 7, 13, and 17, underpinning and underscoring its commitment to delivering financial, environmental AND social ROI.

It’s not a theoretical proposition: ZERO13 is live and active across Africa, the Middle East, Southeast Asia and Latin America, delivering infrastructure and tools to support Article 6.2 (Paris Agreement) Internationally Transferred Mitigation Outcomes (ITMO) trading, national carbon auctions, green real-world asset tokenisation and bilateral climate finance solutions.

ZERO13 has already received global recognition as winner of the COP28 TechSprint and Fintech for Good awards (11:FS and London Fintech). It has also secured multiple strategic and tactical collaborations with regulators, sovereign agencies and institutions.

Where AI meets climate finance

At the Businessabc Global AI Summit, our Chairman and CEO Hirander Misra will address how ZERO13 tackles the core challenges of sustainability and climate finance such as:

• Ways to address the multi-trillion-dollar climate finance gap
• Strategies to mitigate the Global North/South climate investment imbalance
• How to solve climate finance market fragmentation, inefficiency and lack of transparency
• Eradicating the “trust deficit” in carbon markets (carbon credit fraud and double counting)

In particular, Hirander will highlight the invaluable and growing role of AI and blockchain technologies to support a healthy and robust climate finance ecosystem, discussing ‘real world’ use cases in action, including:

• PDD Generator: Automated Project Design Document generation aligned with registry rules, accelerating the time-to-market for carbon projects.
• Anomaly Watchdog: Compliance dashboard monitoring carbon credit double-counting, and fraudulent activity, in real time, enabling high-integrity market participation.
• Article 6 Agent: Streamlining sovereign authorisation for international carbon transfers with smart approval workflows aligned with Article 6 of the Paris Agreement protocols ratified at COP29 (November 2024).

Collectively, these tools can create an autonomous agentic AI framework, supported by a secure, scalable cloud-native sandbox, and blockchain middleware architecture including the Pyctor (ZERO13 Chain) (developed by ING Bank and acquired by GMEX Group, ZERO13’s parent company in July 2022).

Building the Infrastructure for a flourishing climate economy and sustainable future

Pyctor blockchain technology supports multi-custodian wallet provider infrastructure, cross-chain settlement and programmable governance (smart contracts). It enables traditional financial institutions – and Web 3.0 players – to interact securely across fiat, crypto and tokenised ESG green real-world asset instruments, creating a bridge between traditional finance and Web 3.0 innovation.

As the summit turns its lens to AI’s role in enabling ESG and SDG outcomes, ZERO13 offers a working blueprint for a just, connected and tech-enabled transition to a more sustainable future for all, and in ways that are economically viable and support continuing economic growth.

To find out more about becoming part of the ZERO13 community, or to discuss participation in a pilot partner project, contact us via email at info@zero13.net or visit our website zero13.net.