[Editor's note: This story has been updated from a previous version posted at 4:00 p.m. CT March 1. Jassy's second quote under the Reinvention subhead has been updated to better reflect his perspective on reinvention and the energy transition.]

The battle to a low-carbon future will rely on companies incorporating partnerships into their business strategies to actualize their emission goals, according to the heads of BP Plc and Amazon.

“One of the most urgent things that the world could do to address global warming is to back carbon-emitting companies that are committed to getting greener and getting to zero,” BP CEO Bernard Looney said during CERAWeek by IHS Markit on March 1.

Speaking alongside Amazon Web Services’ CEO, Andy Jassy, on the first day of the all-virtual CERAWeek conference, Looney detailed how BP and Amazon teaming up is a great precedent and will be critical to its reinvention.

“That’s how we’re going to reinvent BP and get to net zero, by having partnerships like this and we’re going to grow shareholder value at the same time,” he said.

Through its partnership with Amazon, BP runs its infrastructure through the U.S. e-commerce giant’s cloud computing services. In return, BP provides Amazon with renewable energy.

“Helping energy companies be more energy efficient so they can free up their cycles to work on innovative and expansive renewable projects is really, really important and it’s going to take all of us working together to get there,” Jassy added.

BP expanded its renewable energy supply deal with Amazon in December by agreeing to more than triple the renewable power that it will supply Amazon in Europe.

“With the cloud, organizations can turn capital expenses into a variable expense where they only pay as they consume it, which is very attractive,” Jassy explained. “Plus, it allows them to pay a lower variable expense than what they would normally do on their own.”

More importantly, he noted, utilizing Amazon’s cloud allows enterprises to focus on inventing ways to transform energy.

“Energy companies are all trying to find ways to free up resources and free up people to be able to invent new renewable initiatives that allow us to change the composition of the energy we all consume,” he said. “The cloud allows them to have much more capability to experiment and invent much quicker.”

To this point, London-based BP has invested in the offshore wind market in the U.S. and the U.K., and grew its’ position in solar energy. The company has also placed a heavy focus on performance, putting BP in a better position despite the state of the energy industry, according to Looney.

However, to further transform itself from a global oil major and into an integrated energy company, Looney said BP will depend on partnerships. BP has already allocated resources to build out its partnerships across regions and cities, according to Looney.

The new strategy will see BP diversify and decarbonize over the course of the next decade.

“We’re going to have a tenfold increase in our low-carbon spend and a 20-fold increase in renewable power generation,” Looney said. “We’re going to double the number of customers that we interact with and after growing our hydrocarbons business in the first half of this decade, we'll see it reduced by about 40% by 2030. All of that will lead to our absolute emissions coming down by between 30% and 40%.”

“Quite frankly, partnerships are going to be incredibly important to do this,” he added.

BP’s new strategy was sparked by the critical blow of the COVID-19 and low price environment duo in 2020, according to Looney. As a result, BP made a number of moves last year including cutting 10,000 jobs and its executive rules by 50%. The company also slashed the size of its oil exploration team.

“We decided to really embrace the energy transition more as a massive opportunity and not look at it as some sort of threat to our core business,” Looney said. “Instead of putting this reinvention on hold, we sort of leaned in and doubled down.”

“As the pandemic recedes—as it will—and economies rebound,” he continued, “we’re sort of really poised for takeoff.”

BP is on track to have between 60% and 70% of its data on the cloud service by the end of the year, according to Looney.

Likewise, Amazon plans to have 100,000 electrical delivery vans on the road by 2030. Amazon Web Services has also built a $2 billion fund to help companies who are innovating in the renewable space, Jassy said.

Reinvention

The CEOs of both BP and Amazon Web Services stressed the importance of reinvention culture to tackle the energy transition instead of fighting it by following a suite of established norms.

“If you want to be a company for a long period of time, which turns out to be really hard to do, you have to be able to reinvent yourself sometimes several times over the course of all those years,” Jassy said.

He urged management teams of energy companies to pursue data that reveals what’s happening in their business and in the competitive landscape for the purpose of creating a new course of action that enables them to better serve customers and consumers.

“You can shout out the window and wish it away, as a lot of leading companies do when there are new shifts in technology, or you can realize it’s better for customers to embrace it,” he said. “You are much better off cannibalizing yourself and helping shape that change than wishing it away and chasing it. Leaders must have the will to reinvent and keep away from fighting gravity.”

Looney added this business model has pushed him to pursue continual reinvention at BP rather than thinking of it as a one-off concept.

“One of the things we’re taking from the partnership [with Amazon] is how do we build the company to be more focused on meeting our needs of our customers rather focus on production of resources like we have been in the past,” he said

The world’s finite carbon budget and evolving customer needs also influenced the shift in strategy after 112 years of being an oil and gas-focused company.

“[Our customers] need us to change and they want different things from their energy,” Looney said. “To be successful in the long run, you can't go against the grain of society.”

“We felt there was an enormous business opportunity in re-plumbing and rewiring the global energy system,” he added.

Though, Looney believes it will require trillions of dollars in investment, the complex nature of the energy transition challenge excites him for the future.

“We actually love complexity… it sort of plays to our strengths,” he said.