McKinsey, Microsoft Announce Decarbonization Partnership

Scientists and the United Nations have been stepping up their warnings surrounding climate change, with a September release by the World Meteorological Organization containing a statement that the world is heading toward a “tipping point” beyond which there may be no return. At the time, almost one third of the nation of Pakistan was underwater due to devastating floods, part of an extreme weather trend that is linked in part to climate change. The writing is on the wall, and companies like Microsoft and McKinsey are stepping up to embrace the critical need for innovation and investment in achieving net zero goals.

Their latest endeavor is an integrated solution combining sustainability data from Microsoft Sustainability Manager with McKinsey Sustainability’s Catalyst Zero, enhancing client sustainability efforts by integrating data from emissions-producing activities with initiatives to offset them.

The new combined solution is powered by Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability and uses Sustainability Manager to establish an emissions baseline by automating and scaling the collection of sustainability related data, which is then leveraged by McKinsey’s Catalyst Zero solution, drawing on the consultancy’s climate expertise and transformation experience to provide a holistic understanding of emissions at the enterprise, product, and value chain levels, helping business leaders create an effective decarbonization plan utilizing the firm’s vast collection of proprietary solutions.

“We are focused on accelerating progress to achieve a more sustainable future, and our collaboration with McKinsey to deliver innovative Cloud for Sustainability solutions will help customers unify their data intelligence, build robust IT infrastructure, and gain insights into their overall carbon footprint in order to help them develop and execute robust decarbonization strategies to achieve their sustainability goals.” says Elisabeth Brinton, Microsoft Corporate Vice President for Sustainability.

The new joint offering is designed to rapidly quantify baseline emissions using tens of thousands of emission factors and decarbonization levers across more than 70 industry sectors and then generate a company-specific Marginal Abatement Cost Curve, and ultimately enable the planning and tracking of granular decarbonization initiatives.

The two companies have an established history of working together to boost client impact, with past projects helping to de-risk transformations, build new digital businesses, and use advanced data analytics to redesign business processes.