In celebration of Earth Month and in response to the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report calling for accelerated progress toward net zero, Microsoft is excited to introduce timely updates to Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability. These new features provide improved insights, including Scope 3 waste data, as well as enhanced data access, management, reporting, and customization to help organizations achieve their goals more efficiently.
Enhance insights with personalized dimensions
Organizations can now add custom dimensions (Preview) to data model entities within Microsoft Sustainability Manager, allowing for more precise calculations and analysis. For instance, they can link activity or emissions data with contextual information, such as emissions intensity per employee.
Once data with custom dimensions is ingested, mapped, and calculated, it can be used to produce manufacturing intensity metrics by domain. In the example below, a dashboard displays emissions from laptop manufacturing categorized by assembly line, model, and SKU.
Accelerate progress with data approval management
Data approval management (Preview) is particularly useful for organizations with established data management workflows. It allows data to be staged in a pending state, ensuring it is stored without affecting calculations, analysis, or reporting. Once reviewed and approved by authorized users, the data becomes fully available for these functions.
Effortlessly access Microsoft 365 usage-based emissions data
Organizations can now retrieve Microsoft datacenter emissions data tied to their Microsoft 365 service usage—including Exchange Online, Outlook, SharePoint, OneDrive, Microsoft Teams, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint—via the Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability API (Preview). This API employs a third-party–validated emissions calculation methodology to determine all three emissions scopes as defined by the Greenhouse Gas Protocol. Microsoft 365 administrators can enable organization-wide access using role-based permissions, allowing teams to analyze usage-based emissions data by scope, month, year, and region.
Additionally, organizations can configure access to Azure usage-based emissions data through the Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability API portal, available via the Microsoft Cloud Solution Center.
Stay ahead in disclosure preparation with reporting enhancements
In light of emerging disclosure regulations, Microsoft Sustainability Manager offers a valuable feature: the ability to customize reports with the required sustainability information, regardless of disclosure format.
Organizations can now create comprehensive reports that combine various types of sustainability data, such as emissions figures alongside Scope 1, Scope 2, and Scope 3 activity data. This reduces the need for multiple reports, simplifying and streamlining the disclosure process.
Tailor reporting periods and enhance data control
Organizations can specify reporting periods by naming the reporting year, setting the start date, and applying templates to determine the number of periods created. Once set, the reporting year becomes selectable on insights pages. To enhance data control, the status of a reporting period can be changed from “open” to “closed,” helping to safeguard data during audits or after disclosures.
Create custom views for emissions analysis
The Allocations Dashboard (Preview) allows organizations to track emissions based on headcount, area, production type, or other customizable metrics. This helps businesses understand how internal variables impact overall emissions.
Improve Scope 2 emissions accounting
With the addition of a new calculation methodology (in preview), organizations can now account for both market-based and location-based Scope 2 emissions simultaneously, providing more detailed insights and reporting for the same activity.
Accelerate Scope 2 energy data ingestion
Data Capture (Preview) leverages AI Builder to process purchased energy invoices by training a custom optical character recognition model. This model identifies key attributes, differentiates between energy providers, and ingests the data as Scope 2 activity information.
Streamline data ingestion with a guided experience
Enhanced data processing allows for faster import and transformation of deconstructed data from single or multiple sources, speeding up onboarding and sustainability progress. The new guided experience for data import includes Excel templates, a Power Query flow, and partner solutions, offering flexible options for data ingestion based on data type, source, and user needs.
Users can also gain more control by managing data transformations and attribute mapping in a single process or as separate steps, ensuring each task is handled effectively and efficiently.
Streamline environmental credit processes with Environmental Credit Service (Preview)
The new features in Environmental Credit Service (Preview) are designed to clarify and accelerate processes, enhancing transparency and scalability in environmental markets by providing a common infrastructure and shared data standards.
Identity handling (Preview) enables participants in voluntary environmental markets—such as project suppliers, buyers, and marketplaces—to use their existing identities to seamlessly interact with other participants through the Environmental Credit Service. While the service manages identities within multi-party workflows, participants still authenticate and authorize their own identities.
Processed claims management (Preview), accessible via the Environmental Credit Service API, helps standardize and simplify the validation of environmental claims, typically conducted by validation and verification bodies (verifiers). This feature can expedite the screening and approval process by issuing registries.
Role-based access control (Preview) allows administrators to manage and customize access rights within their organization through both the service and the UI. Admins can control access to assets across organizations and designate which parties are approved for collaboration. For example, if a credit supplier pre-commits credits to a specific buyer, they can restrict access so only that buyer can view the credits.
Enhance waste reduction efforts with the Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability waste data model (Preview)
The new waste data model (Preview), built on the Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability platform, allows for the storage and access of waste sustainability data. It integrates waste quantity and quality measurements with sustainability reference data, tailored for sustainability use cases.
Users gain a comprehensive view of waste across the organization, categorized by type, source, and category. Additionally, they can track and monitor the quality of disposed waste, using these insights to drive waste reduction and contribute to a circular economy.
The waste sustainability data model is available for installation in the Dataverse environment via the Microsoft Cloud Solution Center.
In March 2023, Microsoft introduced the Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability water data model (Preview), which supports efficient calculation, visualization, analysis, and reporting of water sustainability data. This model offers organizations a unified view of water data, helping them meet both mandatory and voluntary reporting requirements with customizable configurations, monitoring, and reporting tools.
Learn more here.