KUALA LUMPUR, June 14 (Bernama) -- PETRONAS and Microsoft today strengthened their strategic partnership through a new renewable energy agreement and collaboration to co-innovate digital solutions that will support PETRONAS’ decarbonisation efforts.
PETRONAS’ subsidiary Amplus Solar, entered into a long-term agreement with Microsoft for a 100MW solar project currently under development by Amplus Solar in Rajasthan, India.
At the same time, both companies are looking at developing the energy industry’s first Digital Sustainability Core to drive the effective application of digital technology to power environmental sustainability. The co-innovation effort will be focused on building an intelligent platform powered by data and artificial intelligence (AI) to support PETRONAS’ decarbonisation efforts while establishing a unified sustainability data hub to record, report, and reduce emissions.
PETRONAS Senior Vice President of Project Delivery and Technology, Bacho Pilong said, “Our partnership with Microsoft, one of the largest corporate buyers of renewable energy in the world today, is a testament to our innovation-driven projects and dedicated focus on enabling corporations to meet their sustainability goals.”
“The collaboration also fortifies our common commitment to leverage digitalisation and technology to achieve sustainability’s triple bottom line of people, planet, and profit. We hope this will spur and catalyse more cross-industry synergy to collectively bring forth a better tomorrow,” added Bacho.
PETRONAS aspires to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050 as part of its holistic approach to sustainability that balances Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) elements. Towards this end, PETRONAS continues to accelerate its efforts toward reducing Scope 1 and Scope 2 greenhouse gas emissions.
Commenting on the partnership, Microsoft Executive Vice President and President, National Transformation Partnerships, Jean-Philippe Courtois said, “To achieve a net zero carbon future, we believe in partnering with every industry to harness the power of technology to address the climate challenges we are confronted with today.
“Our strategic partnership enables both PETRONAS and Microsoft to bring together deep knowledge and technical expertise to further digital transformation in the energy industry with the potential of having a positive impact not only on our planet, but also communities across the globe.”
In January 2020, as part of its commitment to become carbon negative by 2030, Microsoft pledged to have 100 per cent renewable energy supply for all its operations by 2025, including its datacenters, buildings, and campuses.
Microsoft Malaysia Managing Director, K Raman said, “Today’s announcement builds on our long-standing partnership that now extends into sustainable business transformation. This strategic partnership will not only contribute to our own sustainability goals, but it also presents us the opportunity to apply the latest digital technology to support PETRONAS transition to a more sustainable future.”
