(Finance) – Digital and sustainability are two priority issues for companies driven by the search for growth that respects environmental issues and at the same time can also lead to cost efficiency and energy resources. With the aim of helping companies to seize the opportunities offered by digital to manage the complexity of the current economic scenario was born Together4Energy: the initiative of Microsoft Italy And UniCredit which consolidate the partnership to allow Italian companies to improve the management of their resources and consumption, through a greener and more sustainable energy transition path.
The initiative was presented today during the Microsoft Sustainability Summit, event dedicated to digital innovations to accelerate the path of companies towards sustainable growth and the sharing of experiences and success stories in which digital is contributing to the reduction of the impact on the environment. Through the program Together4Energy, tools, technologies and skills are made available to help companies in a concrete way to optimize their energy consumption. Microsoft, UniCredit and Var Group in fact, they support businesses on their path towards development that is more attentive to consumption and the efficient and sustainable use of resources. The plan provides in detail for an assessment of energy consumption and related costs, carried out by Var Group thanks to the Microsoft Azure cloud platform, the identification of any areas for improvement and the proposal of customized digital solutions for companies for more efficient and optimized consumption monitoring and control to derive maximum benefit from new technologies. Added to this is the UniCredit consultancy for an evaluation and financial support also with a view to future investments in Renewable Energy Communities (CERs).
Together4Energy, together with Together4Digital, the program launched in 2021 to accompany companies on their digital transformation journey, are part of Together4, broader action plan structured by UniCredit to support the PNRR and which led the bank to create a dedicated and structured task force to support the 6 missions of the PNRR.
“With this initiative – he said Remo Taricani, deputy head of UniCredit Italia – after the extraordinary ceilings made available in recent months, we are expanding the range of interventions to support Italian companies impacted by the increase in energy procurement costs. Specifically, the Together4Energy project aims at a long-term structural intervention: through the partnership with Microsoft we want to help SMEs rethink their energy policies, providing them with solutions and dedicated financial resources”.
“This initiative – he commented Silvia Candiani, CEO of Microsoft Italy – responds in a concrete way to the requests of Italian companies which, in recent months, have had to face various difficulties related to fluctuations in the energy market and the impact on costs and productivity. Indeed, digital is a powerful accelerator for sustainable growth and an important deflationary force. We are convinced that those who invest in innovation can quickly obtain benefits in terms of energy consumption efficiency and resource optimization. This project will be able to give new impetus to the market and above all to SMEs, which most of all in our country need this type of tools and support to reap all the advantages of green tech”.
“Energy saving is a fundamental issue both in terms of management control and environmental sustainability and the digitization of processes can help companies achieve this efficiency goal – he said Paola Castellacci, head of Business & Customer Experience and Board Member of Var Group – for this reason we are investing heavily in these issues and today we can offer companies highly specialized solutions such as those envisaged in the Together4Energy initiative. And for this
reason we believe it is useful to include the energy issue in the broader digitization initiative that we are carrying out together with UniCredit and Microsoft”.
The initiative arises within the Microsoft’s sustainability strategy and vision. In fact, the company already announced in 2020 a plan to reduce the environmental impact of its products and activities, investing in new technologies and collaborating with its partners around the world to develop innovative models to support the transition towards a sustainable and low-carbon future.