Last week, blockchain startup MineHub and Coriolis announced that they partnered to provide ESG ratings for commodities and supply chain transactions. Coriolis has developed ratings – the Kosmos ESG score – through the Kosmos working group, formed of over 50 leading financial institutions, including Santander, Lloyds Bank, and the International Trade and Forfaiting Association (ITFA). The tool will be available to both customers and financiers alike to verify the ESG performance of suppliers, products, and transactions on the MineHub platform.
The Kosmos working group has devised the Kosmos ESG score to demonstrate the performance of companies and their products against the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – a set of metrics defined by the UN to encourage global cooperation in sustainable development. The tool enables the producer to attach third-party certificates demonstrating their ESG credentials to the blockchain network and automatically include them in any further transactions.
Companies must continue to expand their ESG reporting, as there needs to be continued pressure and accountability surrounding the sustainability goals and targets that have been set in recent years. It is hoped that implementing new technologies such as blockchain will help reduce misinformation and discrepancies in environmental reporting. The Kosmos ESG score uses publicly available data, and Coriolis hopes that the tool will provide a practical benefit to the marketplace and the internationally trading SMEs within it.
“When we set out on the journey to create an automated ESG scoring system, our central objective was to create a collaborative and inclusive group through which we were able to address the most significant issues facing global sustainability,” said Dr. Rebecca Harding, CEO of Coriolis Technologies. “Today’s announcement is an essential milestone in delivering that vision, with some of the biggest firms in the market joining, testing and implementing our product that is unique to the industry.”
MineHub started out focusing on supply chain traceability, but it launched a solution late last year to trace carbon emissions and track ESG credentials. More recently, it partnered with Kimura to enable the ESG credentials to be used to classify commodities financing as sustainable. Other mineral traceability solutions are also becoming more popular, with Re|Source – a cobalt traceability solution – being trialed by Glencore, CMOC, and ERG, and Rio Tinto launching an aluminum traceability solution.
