A Brief Summary

Accenture, Amazon Web Services, Ecopetrol have recently announced their partnership to help accelerate sustainability and operational efficiencies across the energy industry. It is a first-of-its-kind solution for water intelligence and management for energy companies.

Water availability is one of the world's sustainable development goals, which plays a prominent role in the operation of resource-dependent industries. The new water management solution addresses the whole water cycle, from sources to treatment, reuse/recycle and disposal. It enables the companies to seek water neutrality along with net-zero carbon emissions.

The cloud-based water management solution is a platform that maintains a single source of data helping to connect existing ad hoc information to water volume and quality analyses, also costs optimization across the supply chain to support decision-making.

The newly developed solutions apply advanced analytics to optimize water management and improve integrated water efficiency management. It also helps build an ecosystem for participants to share data and encourage water reuse within and between industries.

Accenture's industry knowledge combined with AWS's leading cloud capabilities, such as high-performance computing, storage, machine learning, and artificial intelligence, will help create a water intelligence and management solution.

Ecopetrol will benefit from the solution because it will provide a better knowledge of how to scale down the quantity of freshwater the company acquires from local sources, enhance water treatment, and reuse generated water and wastewater in refining, exploration, and production assets.

Felipe Bayón, Chief Executive Officer at Ecopetrol, said: "Our vision is for the energy industry to lead technological solutions to achieve water neutrality. Collaboration is needed to ignite change because companies cannot solve environmental challenges alone. We will use this platform to accelerate our TESG (technology, environmental, social and governance) strategy, including our goals of reducing 66% of freshwater captured and zero discharges to surface water by 2045, improving the environment for the communities where we operate.”

Julie Sweet, Chair and Chief Executive Officer at Accenture, said: "Ecopetrol is visionary in its aspiration to achieve water neutrality—and in helping the energy industry advance toward this critical sustainability goal. We are honoured to be working with Ecopetrol and AWS on this industrial-strength solution, which we will continuously evolve as technology advances and industries identify new applications.”

Adam Selipsky, Chief Executive Officer at AWS, said: "The conservation and sustainable management of water is a priority for communities and companies around the world, and through leveraging the breadth and depth of AWS, Ecopetrol and Accenture are tackling this challenge at scale. Like other sustainability initiatives, water conservation is a big data problem. By combining data from previously disparate sources across Ecopetrol’s operations, and using AWS cloud-based machine learning and artificial intelligence services, this technology will enable companies across the energy industry to achieve water neutrality.”