Microsoft has launched an effort to become a major player in the rapidly growing energy-efficiency market. The company is recruiting developers and is eyeing opportunities to produce software for building control systems, traffic management systems and water quality management companies.

"The whole transportation sector has huge inefficiencies that can be reduced by software," said Rob Bernard, Microsoft's chief environmental strategist. Bernard said his background in commercial real estate had led him to see a need for more efficient buildings.

"I am highly familiar with the massive opportunity for software and intelligence to optimise energy control systems," he said. "I think that buildings account for something like 37 percent of greenhouse gases around the globe. If you look at the big sectors -- transportation, buildings and building management, deforestation, electrical grid, and utilities -- in every one of those we are looking at how software can enable innovation."

As in other markets, Microsoft will rely heavily on third-party developers. The developers will come up with the applications, and these will run on Microsoft platforms.

"We will build some applications ourselves and we will try to accelerate the entire market to address this problem," he said.

In December, it kicked off a program, called Ingenuity Point, in which developers submit ideas to Microsoft. Microsoft then gives awards each quarter to the best ideas and tries to promote the most promising in the marketplace.