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Shaping the Next Era of Energy Decision Making with Geospatial Intelligence

By Yves Pitsch, GM, Azure Space, Microsoft

The global energy system is entering a new phase—one defined not just by a single transition to renewables, but by the convergence of forces that are reshaping how energy is produced, moved, secured, and governed. Artificial intelligence is accelerating electricity demand and increasing the complexity of the infrastructure needed to deliver it.  Climate impacts are increasingly material, shaping infrastructure resilience, asset performance, and long‑term planning across the energy system. Geopolitics and supply chains are increasingly intertwined with technology decisions.

As AI-driven workloads accelerate and energy systems face tighter constraints, the cost of disconnected decisions is rising fast. Across the energy and resources value chain, leaders are being asked to make decisions that are more interconnected, more time-sensitive, and more consequential than ever before. At Microsoft, we believe the next generation of energy decision-making will be powered by geospatial intelligence; the ability to understand how data, assets, risks, and opportunities interact across space and time. That belief is what’s driving our work on Microsoft Planetary Computer Pro.

And it’s why we’re inviting customers and partners to help shape what comes next.

 

From data-rich to decision-ready

Energy and resources organizations do not lack data. In fact, many are overwhelmed by it. Satellite imagery, aerial and drone data, sensor networks, operational systems, market data, climate models, and regulatory inputs all play a role in how decisions get made. Yet too often, these data sources remain siloed—analyzed in isolation, interpreted by specialists, and disconnected from the AI systems that increasingly guide planning and operations.  What’s missing is not more data, but context. Geospatial data provides that context. It connects information to real-world locations, physical assets, environmental conditions, and infrastructure constraints. It allows organizations to see not just what is happening, but where, why, and what happens next. However, operationalizing geospatial data at enterprise scale has historically been difficult—complex formats, fragmented tooling, and workflows that don’t integrate easily with mainstream data and AI platforms. 

Planetary Computer Pro is designed to change that.

 

Introducing Planetary Computer Pro

Planetary Computer Pro builds on the foundation of the Microsoft Planetary Computer , bringing geospatial intelligence into the heart of enterprise data and AI workflows. Unlike traditional GIS systems, Planetary Computer Pro is designed to operate inside modern data and AI stacks—treating spatial data as a native input to analytics, machine learning, and decision workflows. At its core, Planetary Computer Pro is a cloud-native platform that enables organizations to ingest, manage, and analyze their private geospatial data, securely, at scale, and in ways that integrate naturally with Azure, Microsoft Fabric , Microsoft Foundry, and partner solutions such as Esri. But more importantly, it’s built to make geospatial data usable. Not just for GIS experts, but for data scientists, engineers, and decision-makers across the organization. By treating geospatial data as a first-class input to AI and analytics, Planetary Computer Pro helps organizations move from static maps and point-in-time analysis to continuously updated spatial workflows, where geospatial data can be indexed, organized, discovered, queried, fused, and analyzed at scale for downstream applications.

 

Why this matters for energy and resources leaders

Energy systems are inherently spatial. Power grids, pipelines, renewable assets, supply chains, and communities all exist in physical space, and are increasingly influenced by environmental and geopolitical forces. Geospatial intelligence enables energy and resources leaders to:

• Plan infrastructure under uncertainty
  Model how climate variability, demand growth, and policy shifts interact across regions and time horizons.
• Assess physical climate risk
  Understand how flooding, heat, drought, or extreme weather impact specific assets, operations, and supply chains.
• Optimize operations across the value chain
  Combine location-based data with operational and market signals to improve reliability, efficiency, and resilience.
• Navigate permitting, compliance, and reporting
  Support sustainability and regulatory workflows with spatially precise, auditable insights.

These aren’t isolated use cases—they are system challenges. And solving them requires platforms that can reason about interdependencies, not just optimize individual variables.

 

Built with partners, shaped by customers

One of the lessons we’ve learned from working in highly regulated, capital-intensive industries is that no single organization builds the future alone.

Planetary Computer Pro is being developed in close collaboration with customers and partners across the energy and resources ecosystem; utilities, energy producers, technology providers, and solution builders who understand the realities of operating at scale.  Our goal is not to prescribe a single solution, but to provide a flexible foundation that partners can extend and customers can adapt to their unique needs. This ecosystem approach is intentional. It ensures that Planetary Computer Pro reflects real-world requirements, from security and compliance to interoperability and performance, and that it evolves alongside the industry it serves.

 

An invitation to shape what’s next

That’s why we’re taking a collaborative approach to bringing Planetary Computer Pro to market. This is an invitation to engage early, to explore how spatial context can strengthen AI-driven decisions, and to co-create solutions that reflect the complexity of the world we operate in. If you’ll be at CERAWeek next week, we’d welcome the chance to connect—share what you’re building, see what we’re learning, and explore early collaborations around Planetary Computer Pro. 

The challenges ahead are real—but so is the opportunity to build intelligence that understands the systems we depend on. In the recent Microsoft Foundry blog on Aurora, we shared how foundation models can help organizations reason over complex, real-world signals; bringing that kind of capability together with spatial context is a powerful next step for the energy and resources industry. We look forward to shaping what comes next, together.