Microsoft, Accenture, and their joint venture Avanade announced a collaborative initiative to use data, artificial intelligence (AI), and each company's existing sustainability tools to build software offerings that address horizontal and industry-specific challenges posed by climate change.

The partnership will see these providers invest to design and architect solutions that release less carbon over their life cycles. The companies also plan to offer joint advisory services to help businesses lower emissions; accelerate the renewable energy transition; and eliminate water, food, and raw material waste.

“Operating sustainably has become a source of competitive advantage, enabling organizations to increase efficiency, accelerate growth, and lead with purpose,” Microsoft EVP and Chief Commercial Officer Judson Althoff said in a statement.

“By combining our expertise with Accenture and Avanade, we have an opportunity and responsibility to deliver innovative solutions that will empower organizations to achieve their sustainability goals and drive lasting environmental change," he added.

The joint effort will focus on extending current tools and developing new ones that address four main areas: digital manufacturing, renewable energy, green software engineering, and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) measurement.

To help manufacturing organizations scale the digital foundation of production sites and factory networks, Microsoft and its partners plan to develop tools to optimize asset utilization and implement principles of circularity into business models.

The initiative will use digital twin technology to help manufacturing organizations reduce waste, emissions, and material and resource consumption. Digital twins also show potential for increasing transparency throughout these organizations' supply chains.

Microsoft, Accenture, and Avanade will also focus on the clean energy transition by developing offerings that connect and integrate energy infrastructure, develop carbon intelligence, and shift customers' business models away from reliance on carbon-intensive fossil fuel energy.

"The world is at an inflection point where organizations are expected to play an active role in addressing sustainability issues," Avanade CEO Pam Maynard said in a statement. "Now more than ever, technology is key to accelerating environmental, social and governance goals and enabling organizations to be sustainable through continual change."

In addition, the joint initiative aims to supply organizations with the energy efficient infrastructure and workload flexibility needed to reduce overall energy consumption.

New offerings on Microsoft Azure will focus on strategy development and assessment of current IT infrastructure; architecting and testing solutions; building a carbon-aware approach to cloud migration and software engineering; and improving sustainable business transformations with Microsoft's sustainability cloud service, according to the company.

Measuring and reporting negative environmental impact are the first steps to reducing it, and ESG reporting is under increasing regulatory pressure as of late.

Microsoft and its partners aim to provide organizations deeper insights into their supply chain, or scope 3, emissions by breaking data siloes and providing data-led insights with actionable steps organizations can take to reduce their impacts.

"Our partnership with Microsoft and Avanade will help organizations find new value at the intersection of technology and sustainability – from embracing green software development principles and sustainable cloud migrations, to digital twin technology adoption – to drive stronger performance and competitiveness, and make progress on their decarbonization goals and their journey to net zero," Accenture CEO Julie Sweet added.