Global management consulting firm McKinsey and tech giant Microsoft announced today the creation of a new integrated solution aimed at helping organizations plan and execute decarbonization strategies.

According to McKinsey and Microsoft, the collaboration comes to address companies’ needs for an efficient and scalable technology solution that can calculate their organizations overall carbon footprint, and help build and carry out a decarbonization plan.

Tomas Nauclér, Senior Partner at McKinsey and Global co-Leader of McKinsey Sustainability, said:

“Urgent and decisive action to curtail emissions is needed if we are to reach net zero by 2050. By combining our tech and sustainability expertise and experience, Microsoft and McKinsey will help businesses accurately and swiftly measure and reduce their overall carbon footprint.”

The combined solution will be powered by Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability, and brings together sustainability data intelligence from Microsoft Sustainability Manager with decarbonization planning and an execution engine using McKinsey Sustainability’s Catalyst Zero.

Microsoft announced the general availability of its Cloud for Sustainability earlier this year, providing a suite of digital solutions aimed at helping organizations accelerate their sustainability processes and initiatives, and deliver ESG insights and transparency. The company also unveiled its Sustainability Manager, a data intelligence solution offering organizations an increasingly automated view into the emissions impact of their entire operations and value chain.

McKinsey recently introduced Catalyst Zero, its end-to-end decarbonization solution that helps clients find and remove carbon from their business operations. The solution forms part of McKinsey Sustainability, a net zero-focused initiative launched by the firm in 2020.

The new combined solution will help companies to automate the collection of sustainability-related data and establish an emissions baseline, generate a holistic understanding of emissions at company, product and value chain levels, and create detailed decarbonization plans. The solution also enables regular monitoring through plan execution to determine if the forecasted impact is occurring according to plan.

Elisabeth Brinton, Microsoft Corporate Vice President for Sustainability, said:

“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.”