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Microsoft’s Thom McKiernan Joins RISE Awards Judging Panel
- Daisy Moll
- 15 minutes ago
- 3 min read
The latest group of judges for the RISE Awards includes Thom McKiernan, who leads Microsoft’s UK Sustainability Squad. He is tasked with harnessing technology’s potential to accelerate the shift towards a sustainable future.
The RISE Awards are being held on 6th November at London’s Grand Connaught Rooms, to celebrate the best startups and scaleups in the sustainability space. Entries are closing on 31st of August. Submit your entry now to get your company in front of an esteemed panel of judges and a room full of investors.
McKiernan has spent his career in IT, where efficiency has been the guiding principle, with his passion for sustainability initially a personal pursuit. “I’d tried just about everything on the sustainability bingo card at home,” he says. The turning point came when he encountered Microsoft’s carbon-accounting tool. “That was when the penny dropped. I realised I could bring my personal passions into my work, helping customers focus on sustainability through business improvement and digital transformation.”
Microsoft's Sustainability Manager is a comprehensive platform that unifies and automates sustainability data across emissions, water, waste, and ESG metrics. According to McKiernan, it helps organisations break down data silos, streamline reporting, and gain real-time insights into their environmental impact via dashboards, compliance tools, and goal-tracking features.
McKiernan notes the influence Microsoft's sustainability efforts have in influencing change beyond their own company. “I might work with 50 customers in the UK,” he explains. “If something works for them, I can replicate it across industries and countries. That reach means we can influence not just businesses but policy too.”
The inclusion of McKiernan’s international perspective which considers how sustainability initiatives reverberate not just within individual firms but across entire economies and even national borders will be valuable insight in the judging process. Underscoring the imperative for startups to recognise that their innovations must align with the wider global transition towards sustainability.
The AI equation
For McKiernan, AI is central to sustainability. “It is essential for tackling the big problems if we want a sustainable future,” he argues. From alternative protein development to fertiliser efficiency and traffic optimisation, its potential is huge.
Critics point to the carbon footprint of large AI models, but McKiernan is optimistic. “Hardware efficiency improves every year. Customers are asking tougher questions, and that pressure is driving greener innovation. The opportunity is to use AI to remove inefficiencies at scale.”
Further, McKiernan is seeing the opportunity of AI extending beyond traditional sites. One of McKiernan’s success stories involved a partnership with an energy supplier to monitor and manage impacts as it developed offshore wind turbines off the coast of northern Scotland. Local communities expressed concern that the project might disrupt the region’s distinctive puffin population.
To address this, ‘puffin detectors’, a network of cameras and sensors trained with an image recognition model, were installed on cliff tops, to monitor the birds without disturbing them. The data was transmitted to the cloud, enabling real-time analysis of puffin behaviour during turbine construction and operation. Overall, the technology assuaged residents’ concerns, and engineers adjusted designs in line with the puffins’ habits, ensuring development proceeded without harming the local ecosystem. By bridging technology and ecology, Puffin Watch demonstrated the expanding scope of digital solutions to support sustainable development, advancing critical infrastructure while safeguarding local ecosystems.
Learning lessons
Microsoft has inevitably undergone public scrutiny. Like all major players in the AI race, it faces questions about its carbon footprint. As an early adopter of carbon credits, the company was forced to reassess after accusations of greenwashing, based on later research conducted around how carbon credits were being generated. “We realised we had to shape the market, not just participate,” McKiernan says.
Today it invests directly in renewable energy projects and has pledged to be carbon negative, water positive and zero waste by 2030, with the additional goal of offsetting all historic emissions by 2050.
The path to sustainability is rarely linear. As benchmarks evolve, companies must remain flexible and willing to adapt. At the RISE Awards, McKiernan is looking for companies who are going to be part of this shift, “the most exciting thing is when companies use technology to solve problems in ways no one expected,” he says. “That’s what drives real change.”
If you are a startup looking to get feedback from an esteemed judging panel sign up to the RISE Awards before 31st August.