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In this blog, we explain how creating scorecards and goals empowers you to curate sustainability metrics and track against your organization’s key business objectives. We also share other recent updates to Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability designed to help you manage, track, report, and gain better insight into your sustainability data. 

Use scorecards and goals to achieve your sustainability objectives

Sustainability reporting can be a complex process. Sustainability Manager includes a new capability that simplifies the process, making it more accessible and manageable for you to communicate your organization’s sustainability achievements. With scorecards and goals, you can curate your organization’s sustainability metrics and track them against your organization’s business objectives. 

Create a scorecard, which you can use to chart your organization’s sustainability metrics, encapsulate them within a scorecard, and designate an owner to guide its advancement. 

Create goals, the benchmark of your organization’s sustainability trajectory, which can be seamlessly integrated with the scorecards. These goals, whether entered manually or derived from interconnected data streams, provide a dynamic framework for sustainability targets, adaptable to the shifting tides of your organization’s needs. 

Using the scorecards and goals feature, you can mark goals as aligning to the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), giving your organization the ability to highlight the scientific rigor and global recognition of its sustainability efforts. By including a baseline year, the goal-setting process deepens, offering a historical perspective from which you can measure and assess progress. Finally, the dual capability of manual updates or automated system tracking enables you to not only set but actively pursue and achieve your organization’s sustainability goals.  

The scorecards and goals capability transcends the mere establishment of targets, fostering a culture of engagement and accountability. It provides a centralized platform for setting, monitoring, and updating sustainability goals, which is crucial for accurate disclosure reporting. With the ability to connect goals to data sources, you can ensure that your organization’s reporting is data-driven and reflects real-time progress towards its sustainability targets. This feature simplifies the complex process of sustainability reporting, making it more accessible and manageable for organizations of all sizes to communicate their sustainability achievements transparently to stakeholders.  

Calculate emissions using IEA factors within Sustainability Manager 

Multinational organizations can now calculate emissions using International Energy Agency (IEA) emission factors within Sustainability Manager, with some restrictions as governed by IEA. Using the IEA factors can help you understand your organization’s carbon footprint and develop strategies to reduce emissions, as well as help with regulatory compliance, risk management, and cost reduction. 

The IEA factors library is available to download from Microsoft Cloud Solution Center. The IEA emission factors are available to use alongside all other emission factor libraries within Sustainability Manager. This feature is available within Sustainability Manager Premium.

Learn how to calculate emissions with the IEA emissions feature. 

Create and associate meter entities with a facility within Sustainability Manager 

For Scope 1 and Scope 2 emission categories, customers collect utility consumption data from utility providers through bills and, in some cases, through real-time devices like meters. The consumption reported in utility bills and real-time devices are recorded through utility meters (per collection device configuration). 

Now deprecated, Sustainability Manager previously included an optional meter text attribute for purchased energy and stationary combustion. However, since the consumption is recorded at a facility level and the meter is the device used to record this consumption for each facility, the meter must be associated with a facility within Sustainability Manager. 

You can now create and associate multiple utility meters (entities) with the facility entity in Sustainability Manager. This will enable you to track and report energy consumption for emissions calculations, as well as water usage at a facility level within your organization. 

Note that reports by meter is a future enhancement. In the meantime, you can use custom reports to add meter-based pivot views. 

Transfer data connections across deployments 

Sustainability Manger includes advanced ingestion capabilities. A connection is made of several parts:   

• The data source connectivity specifications  
• Mode of ingestion such as Power Query, Excel, or from a custom data provider  
• Mapping of source shape to the Sustainability Manager data model  
• Execution context, such as scheduling  

Enterprises need repeatable, verifiable processes across deployments; so, once a connection is specified, it can be transferred across deployments or environments. Now, environment administrators can use application lifecycle management (ALM) with Microsoft Power Platform to transfer connections across environments.   

Learn more about how to copy connections from one environment to another. 

Gain insights into your organization’s sustainability progress with Microsoft Copilot Studio templates 

The Sustainability Insights Copilot template (preview) was recently added to Copilot Studio. The template enables you to get insights and see data about your organization’s sustainability goals and progress and can be tailored to suit your organization’s specific needs. Information can be publicly shared in the form of reports, documents, and records. For example, a company’s sales and marketing professionals might be required to respond to queries from customers about the company’s sustainability progress on various sustainability fronts like measuring across environmental metrics, social and governance stats and indexes, energy meters, pollution indexes, and biodiversity impact.  

You can create and deploy a Sustainability Insights Copilot template as you would for any other Copilot template in Copilot Studio. 

Once deployed, your copilot is ready to field questions.  

You can configure the template with more sources of knowledge and other system of records, leveraging connectors to respond to related queries better.  

Enhanced Scope 3 categories now generally available in Sustainability Manager 

We’re excited to announce that Sustainability Manager has successfully completed the verification process for several Scope 3 categories of the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol. The following categories are now generally available:  

• Category 3: Fuel-and energy-related activities  
• Category 10: Processing of sold products  
• Category 11: Use of sold products  
• Category 14: Franchises  
• Category 15: Investments 

This update spans across various features, including import, activity data, calculations, and documentation, ensuring a seamless user experience.  

The verification process was comprehensive, involving a rigorous assessment and validation of data, methodologies, and calculations related to these Scope 3 categories. Independent experts conducted a thorough review to ensure accuracy, consistency, and compliance with industry standards.  

We’re committed to providing you with reliable and transparent tools to manage your sustainability efforts. The general availability of these enhanced Scope 3 categories marks a significant milestone in our journey towards empowering organizations to achieve their environmental goals. 

Learn more about sustainability solutions with Microsoft 

• Bookmark Microsoft Industry Blogs: Sustainability for the latest updates, including new capabilities in Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability.  
• Discover solutions with Microsoft Sustainability Manager. 
• Explore the Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability Community, where you can find answers to questions and connect with peers and experts. 
• See what’s new in Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability June 2024.

Want to learn more about Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability? Sign up for news and updates. 

The post Simplify reporting with real-time insight into your sustainability progress appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs.

To address this growing need, Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability data solutions in Microsoft Fabric (preview) can help organizations take sustainability data in any format, organize, and normalize the data for sustainability regulatory reporting. This quantitative data reporting approach is complemented by a joint solution from Accenture and Avanade that leverages generative AI to provide qualitative insights. This enables organizations to manage workflows associated with multiple sustainability reporting frameworks globally, including CSRD, Global Report Initiative (GRI), and the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB). Organizations can optimize both quantitative data from Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability solutions and qualitative data with Accenture and Avanade’s generative AI-powered solution. 

The solution integrates seamlessly with Microsoft Sustainability Manager, offering a comprehensive platform for managing sustainability key performance indicators (KPIs) across different frameworks. The solution’s collaborative features, generative AI-enhanced insights, and streamlined data integration can help organizations simplify compliance-related processes. Meanwhile, the improved richness of its sustainability reporting enables organizations to take more effective actions to achieve their ESG targets.  

Sustainability data solutions in Fabric

Unique capabilities that provide prebuilt and preconfigured Fabric resources

Read the overview

Navigate the complexities of reporting frameworks

All ESG reporting frameworks carry their own complexities. However, the CSRD has been top of mind in 2024 for organizations in and outside of the European Union as they begin to gather, analyze, and report the required data. This is no simple task—the CSRD encompasses 12 standards and 82 reporting requirements, which amounts to approximately 500 KPIs and over 10,000 underlying data points. In addition to managing this large array of ESG data, companies face other significant challenges associated with CSRD compliance and data management including reporting on the entire value chain versus only on their own organization. The evolving nature of sustainability criteria and metrics further complicates the reporting process. 

Navigating the intricacies of a multitude of reporting frameworks and intricate regulations necessitates extensive data gathering and assimilation. The process of ESG reporting often engages various departments and resources within an organization, introducing its own set of risks and costs. The more manual a process, the more opportunities there are for errors to occur, and the complexities of each reporting framework require time, diligence, and accuracy. A proficient solution can help simplify the process and effectively aid in the generation of accurate reports with fewer resources required. 

Accenture and Avanade’s generative AI-powered solution allows users to select from different reporting frameworks and adapts to the specific requirements of the chosen framework, displaying relevant categories and reporting structures. Users can access the breadth and depth of their data and translate it into the necessary reporting frameworks. This flexibility is crucial for organizations that are subject to multiple reporting obligations or need to adhere to international standards beyond local mandates. 

Streamlining data management using Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service

Accenture and Avanade’s solution addresses the dual challenges of qualitative and quantitative data in sustainability reporting, utilizing Azure OpenAI for enhancing its reporting capabilities, especially for qualitative data input. Using Azure OpenAI to create an AI assistant, Accenture and Avanade’s solution offers a unified platform for sustainability reporting, simplifying the process of compiling CSRD reports, making it easier for users to interact with data and generate reports quickly.  

• Qualitative data management: Leveraging Azure OpenAI integration, Accenture and Avanade’s solution assists in drafting responses to qualitative questions, such as detailing a company’s sustainability policies, practices, and goals. This AI assistant ensures that responses are not only in keeping with reporting standards but also reflective of best practices and forward-thinking sustainability strategies.  
• Quantitative data management: The integration of Microsoft Sustainability Manager allows for the automatic import of calculated quantitative metrics. This means that insights or recommendations provided by Accenture and Avanade’s solution is informed by the data in the user’s ESG platform. The AI assistant enables identification of trends and patterns in both qualitative and quantitative data sources, aiding in a more holistic analysis.   

An enhanced collaborative workflow  

One of the biggest pain points that companies have related to ESG reporting is managing the approval workflow with multiple process and approval steps. It’s important to have a trail of accountability, which depending on organization size, can exist across several departments and users. Accenture and Avanade’s solution enables organizations to assign responsibility and accountability, thereby streamlining the process of preparing the report and its associated approval processes.   

Importantly, team members can work on the same sections of the report simultaneously and the platform maintains comprehensive audit trails of all changes made to the report. This transparency is vital for accountability, enabling team leaders to monitor progress and ensure that all contributions align. 

Learn more about sustainability solutions

By facilitating clear communication, structured workflows, and shared access to data in Microsoft Sustainability Manager, Accenture and Avanade’s generative AI-powered solution enables teams to work together toward their sustainability reporting goals. 

To learn more about Accenture and Avanade’s generative AI-powered solution and how it can be customized for your industry and region, register for a complimentary workshop.  

The post Leverage AI to simplify CSRD reporting   appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs.

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In this blog, we show you how the ESG value chain solution in Microsoft Sustainability Manager enables you to gather data directly from your value chain partners, streamlining supplier engagement to gain a more comprehensive and accurate picture of those suppliers’ environmental impacts that contribute to your own company’s impacts. With better access, management, and integration of shared sustainability data, you can get ahead of Scope 3 data challenges and move faster toward your targets. We also share what we’re doing to drive improved data sharing globally, and we highlight recent updates to Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability. 

Spotlight on Scope 3 data collection and sharing

Gathering and processing value chain data can be especially resource-intensive and time-consuming for large and global organizations with thousands of value chain partners that do business with them, are otherwise invested in their organization, or whose data they need to collect. The ESG value chain solution simplifies this process by providing a centralized and secure platform to collect, validate, and aggregate data from these partners.

Enable precision Scope 3 emissions data collection

Improving the quality and reliability of your Scope 3 emissions data from indirect upstream and downstream activities requires precise, granular data from your value chain partners. With ESG value chain surveys, you can request either the qualitative and quantitative data you need or different datasets from different groups of partners. Surveys help you gain a deeper and more nuanced understanding of your Scope 3 emissions and pinpoint the areas where you can make the most impact.

Scope 3 emissions accounting also requires ongoing engagement and communication with your value chain partners. With ESG value chain solution tools, we have simplified the supplier data collection process. Organizations can invite, onboard, and collect data from partners, helping you increase confidence in Scope 3 accounting processes and data.    

Additionally, you can use suppliers’ ESG ratings provided by EcoVadis to see how critical players across your value chain are doing on multiple ESG fronts, for extra visibility into your value chain and supplier footprints. To enable EcoVadis ratings in Microsoft Sustainability Manager, you need to have an account with EcoVadis.

What’s next for the ESG value chain solution?

At Microsoft, we began using the ESG value chain solution to collect data from our own value chain partners in early 2023. Now we’re combining what we’ve learned with feedback from customers to plan for future improvements to the solution, with our next expansion planned for Fall 2024.  

How we’re driving broader improvements in sustainability data sharing

Among the biggest challenges in sharing sustainability data is the fragmented and often duplicative manual effort required to share data across value chain partners. To help streamline this process going forward, we’re enabling suppliers and their customers to automatically share and interpret the required data for their own calculations and reporting. This data ranges from the inputs required for carbon accounting, such as energy data, to more granular supply chain data that’s emerging from initiatives like WBCSD: PACT Product Carbon Footprint (PCF) and the European Union Digital Product Passport (DPP).

Microsoft is actively supporting and participating in this effort through initiatives like Carbon Call to better understand and share greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions data, and the WBCSD: PACT initiative, to help develop the global standard for calculating and exchanging Scope 3 emissions data across value chains. We believe these initiatives will help create a more transparent and consistent sustainability data ecosystem. 

We’re also working to create sample reference accelerators based on these initiatives, to help our customers and partners leverage Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability and expand the data-sharing ecosystem. To learn more, sign up for the WBCSD Pathfinder Accelerator private preview. 

MASSIV+: Working toward net-zero supply chains through cross-industry data sharing

Microsoft is also an active participant in the MASSIV+ consortium of industry leaders in Sweden, working to create a common platform for sharing and validating sustainability data across the consortium’s collective value chain. MASSIV+ aims to enable more accurate and transparent reporting of GHG emissions, starting with Scopes 1 and 2, to more accurately calculate Scope 3 emissions. The partnership aims to achieve net-zero supply chains by 2030 to 2050. 

MASSIV+ is defining a new framework around what data to share through its new Sustainability Data Exchange Protocol, layering an organization’s data from high-level company and location data to more granular product-level data through protocol messages. Eventually, MASSIV+ will look to expand capabilities supporting how the data is shared through data spaces that define data sharing policies and contracts.

What’s new in Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability

Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability continues to add ESG capabilities to help you accelerate your sustainability progress. Read on for details—and check out our updates page to see a comprehensive summary.  

Analytical reporting extensibility

Addressing your organization’s unique sustainability analytics requires a customized approach. With the analytical reporting extensibility in Microsoft Sustainability Manager, now in preview, you can create custom analytical dashboards using the built-in insight pages across emissions, water, and waste as your baseline. Customizing your Microsoft Power BI dashboards to highlight the content most important to your organization will enable faster analysis and decision-making. 

Users can select Copy on any emissions, water, or waste report page. This will create a copy of the built-in analytics report pages and will enable them to: 

• Edit and delete existing analytical page components. 
• Add new metrics or components. 
• Change chart types. 
• Personalize the page layout. 

Once the analytics pages have been tailored to your organizational requirements, simply save your changes and the new dashboard will be available by default to all users who have reporting privileges. Users can switch between the custom and standard dashboards through the custom dashboard (preview) toggle. 

CSRD reporting enhancements

Organizations can generate quantitative reports that extract emissions, water, and waste data from Microsoft Sustainability Manager to satisfy the requirements of the European Union Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). Understanding the key requirements and data to include in your CSRD preparation report is paramount to a successful disclosure. Once you understand the requirements, you can easily map metrics or data points to the requirements. 

This mapping provides you with enhanced efficiency and accuracy when disclosing through CSRD. Organizations no longer need to sift through all their sustainability data to determine what to include to meet the requirements. The quantitative data captured through Microsoft Sustainability Manager can be included in this updated assessment template. 

See the requirements and steps to generate a quantitative preparation report.

Audit of disclosure requirements in Microsoft Purview Compliance Manager

Region-specific regulations, such as CSRD, require organizations to perform an assurance audit on the disclosures prior to report submission. Organizations need a mechanism for sharing curated disclosure data along with associated evidence documents required for substantiating the data during the audit process. Assigned auditors need the ability to review the disclosed data and evidence documents against the disclosure requirement and provide their comments.  

Auditors can visualize this data against regulatory requirements by using Compliance Manager. With Compliance Manager, you can help ensure your organization’s adherence to CSRD requirements. Auditors can then review the data and the corresponding evidence documents in Compliance Manager against the disclosure requirements and input their approval status along with comments. 

Organizations with Sustainability data solutions in Microsoft Fabric (preview) will be able to compute and disclose the required ESG metrics for the sustainability regulations like CSRD. This ESG metrics data can then be visualized in the Compliance Manager against the CSRD assessments leveraging the Purview Sustainability data solutions connector. This way that auditor would have a seamless experience to monitor the status of completion and approvals, plan subsequent actions, and more effectively manage compliance with sustainability regulations. 

Learn how to enable audit of disclosure requirements in Compliance Manager.

Enhanced country or region mapping capabilities

Some organizations are structured in such a way that regional compliance standards apply to part, but not all, of their operations. These organizations may need to pivot calculations based on specific countries or regions. Microsoft Sustainability Manager now supports the ability to specify custom country or region entries. You can associate an activity or emissions record with a country or region and then design and run relevant calculations. 

Learn how to create and use custom country or region values in Microsoft Sustainability Manager.

Keep learning about Microsoft sustainability solutions

During the first week of May 2024, the Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability product team hosted our first-ever Technical Summit. The goal was to help our customers and partners understand more complex capabilities and to provide tips and tricks for driving the most impact from Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability features. This included four days of expert-led how-to sessions—all recorded for on-demand reference in our Learn Documentation. Check out the Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability Technical Summit. 

More resources: 

• Bookmark Microsoft Industry Blogs: Sustainability for the latest updates, including new capabilities in Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability.  
• Learn more about Microsoft Sustainability Manager. 
• Explore the Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability Community, where you can find answers to questions and connect with peers and experts. 

Want to learn more about Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability? Sign up for news and updates. 

The post Optimize sustainability data management across your value chain appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs.

One of our newest AI-powered features, what-if analysis (preview), is designed to help you forecast the impact of business practice changes on your organization’s carbon emissions. Read about this and other exciting new features now available in preview within Sustainability Manager.

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Accelerate carbon reduction planning with what-if analysis

Now in preview, the new AI-powered what-if analysis feature in Sustainability Manager enables you to forecast the impact of business practice changes on your overall emissions footprint so you can implement more informed carbon reduction strategies. Using your historical data and corresponding calculation models, the what-if analysis tool intelligently forecasts forward for both your existing strategy and a new strategy that you’re considering.

For example, Susan is a sustainability manager working with her team to plan their organization’s sustainability initiatives for the following fiscal year. She uses what-if analysis to compare the impacts of several business practice changes her team is considering. Using the information provided, Susan and her team plan the top three initiatives predicted to enable the biggest advances toward the company’s carbon reduction goals.

What-if analysis will help you determine the most effective ways to reduce your organization’s carbon footprint and achieve your sustainability goals.

Using the what-if analysis tool, you can:

• Customize AI modeling using your organization’s carbon activity data and return forecasts in MTCO2e.
• Apply predefined scenarios that allow users to tailor analysis to your organization’s needs.

With customizable scenarios spanning across all three scopes of emissions, the what-if analysis tool is designed to accommodate the unique needs of every organization. Whether you’re considering transitioning to renewable energy for one of your facilities or comparing potential suppliers, what-if analysis can help you quickly and easily understand the potential impact of those changes on your carbon emissions.  

At our This is AI … for Sustainability event in February 2024, Södra, a forestry company based out of Sweden, spoke at length about the value of knowing what to invest in when it comes to an organization’s sustainability journey. They highlighted the immense value add of what-if analysis in Sustainability Manager, detailing how the customizable and data-driven results can help immensely when it comes to making the best possible investment for their organization.

What-if analysis can help your organization transition from simply ingesting, calculating, and reporting on your environmental data to driving impactful decisions and change. Learn more about what-if analysis.

Use Copilot in Microsoft Sustainability Manager to analyze complex ESG documents

Also now in preview, document analysis, powered by Microsoft Copilot in Sustainability Manager, enables organizations to seamlessly upload and query environmental, social, and governance (ESG) documents in natural language for the information they need. This new feature is designed to help you save time and effort in finding and extracting relevant information from your ESG documents.

After uploading your documents, select up to five that you’d like to query. Copilot will then quickly parse the contents of each document and return the information you need, along with any necessary citations leading to the source of that answer. 

Let’s use Lisa, a procurement officer at Contoso Coffee Company, as an example. Lisa is conducting a lateral comparison of sustainability reports from three suppliers. She asks Copilot for each company’s carbon reduction goals for the next five years, along with how they’re planning to increase transparency and collaboration with their customers. With this information, Lisa can effectively compare the data-driven goals and commitments made by these suppliers and make an informed decision when choosing a supplier that aligns most closely with her company’s own strategy. 

Document analysis can help at any stage of your sustainability journey, from learning about calculations through Greenhouse Gas Protocol’s Scope 3 Calculation Guidance to comparing supplier reports and understanding complex reporting requirements. Whether you’re at the record, report, or reduce stage in your journey, document analysis can help you find the information you need to create timelier and more data-driven decisions for your organization. Learn more about document analysis.

Identify patterns and visualize water and waste with key influencers

Detailed insights are paramount to effective decision-making and achieving sustainability goals. In November 2023 we announced key influencers, an analytics enhancement that helps organizations increase the level of intelligence delivered through Sustainability Manager related to carbon emissions. This enhancement now includes support for water and waste. 

Key influencers (preview) provides visibility into patterns driving increases or decreases in key water and waste scenarios. Specifically, the water scenarios supported are water withdrawn, water discharged, and water consumed. Waste scenarios include waste generated, waste disposed, and waste recovered. As the patterns are established, you can quickly identify the most significant contributing factors driving increases and decreases.

ADEME emission factors now available in Sustainability Manager

Emission factors are a fundamental tool for accurately calculating emissions and developing emissions control strategies. They exist for every emission source or category applied to activity data. By leveraging these factors, organizations can quantify the environmental impact of their operations.

ADEME (Agence de la transition écologique) plays a pivotal role in supporting France’s transition to a more sustainable future. ADEME emission factors aid in measuring and mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. Now available in Sustainability Manager, these factors provide essential data for estimating emissions associated with various activities, such as energy consumption, transportation, and industrial processes.

The benefits of ADEME emission factors integration to you include:

• Precise calculations for accurate emissions assessment. ADEME emission factors provide granular data specific to French contexts. Whether you’re assessing energy consumption, transportation, or other activities, these factors enhance the accuracy of your emission calculations. Imagine a manufacturing facility in Lyon. By using ADEME emission factors tailored to the region’s energy mix, the facility can precisely estimate its carbon footprint. This precision allows targeted reduction strategies.
• Localized insights and regional context. Organizations operating in France can now align their sustainability efforts with local standards. ADEME emission factors ensure that emission assessments reflect the unique environmental context of the region. For instance, a vineyard in Bordeaux can use ADEME emission factors to evaluate emissions related to vine cultivation, winemaking, and distribution. These localized insights empower informed decisions, such as optimizing transportation routes or adopting renewable energy sources.
• A holistic approach to sustainability. Incorporating ADEME emission factors contributes to a comprehensive understanding of your carbon footprint. It’s not just about direct emissions; it’s about the entire lifecycle. Consider a Parisian hotel. By factoring in emissions from guest transportation, food sourcing, and waste management, the hotel gains a holistic view. This informs choices like sourcing local produce or implementing energy-efficient lighting.

To load the ADEME emission factors, select the ADEME factor set in Solution Center and install them to your Sustainability Manager environment. Once integrated, these factors become part of your toolkit for informed decision-making, reporting, and continuous improvement.

See the Carbon Base® public database of emission factors.

Calculate waste-generated values to better understand usage and environmental impact

Organizations don’t always have the instrumentation in place to measure and track waste quantities at a facility, potentially impacting their waste sustainability progress. Sustainability Manager now includes a new capability to help you estimate your organization’s waste quantities through intensity-based factors, which play a crucial role in understanding usage and impact on the environment. The waste estimation (preview) feature allows you to estimate waste disposed and waste diverted values that together constitute the total waste generated.

With waste-generated calculations, you can define intensity factors to estimate the waste disposed or waste recovered. For example, estimating the waste disposed as a percentage of the total square foot area of the facility can help you calculate the total waste-generated values. You can customize and configure these intensity factors based on any parameter that is defined. You can also configure the time interval for which you want to define the estimated waste-quantity values and use these estimated values to accelerate your organization’s waste sustainability journey. Learn more about waste estimation.

Learn more about sustainability solutions with Microsoft

• Bookmark Microsoft Industry Blogs: Sustainability for the latest updates, including new capabilities we’re introducing across Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability. 
• Discover solutions with Microsoft Sustainability Manager.
• Explore the Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability Community portal, a vibrant hub for learning, connecting, and contributing.

Want to learn more about Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability? Sign up for news and updates and try it for free.

The post Advance your carbon reduction strategy with intelligent forecasting and data analysis appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs.

Copilot in Microsoft Sustainability Manager

Streamline and expedite several processes with the sustainability lifecycle

Read the overview

Save time and effort creating calculation models with Copilot in Microsoft Sustainability Manager

In the dynamic landscape of sustainability, accurate calculations are the bedrock of informed decision-making. Whether measuring carbon emissions, water usage, or waste reduction, sustainability practitioners rely on robust calculation models. However, creating these models can be complex and time-consuming. That’s where the new create calculation models with Copilot feature, now in preview, comes in. 

The driving force behind creating calculation models with Copilot is accessibility. We recognize that sustainability practitioners come from diverse backgrounds, and not all are experts in mathematical modeling. Our goal is to democratize the process by allowing you to express your calculation requirements in natural language. By bridging the gap between technical jargon and practical needs, we’re empowering you to focus on sustainability outcomes rather than wrestling with formulas. 

Here’s how it works:

1. Natural language input. To generate a calculation model, simply describe the calculation you need. For example, you can input “Determine emissions from mobile combustion based on distance.” 

2. Automated model generation. Behind the scenes, intelligent algorithms parse the input, identify relevant variables, and construct a calculation model.

Once generated, the calculation model is ready for immediate use. You can now integrate it into your sustainability reports, dashboards, and compliance assessments. 

By automating the model creation process, Microsoft Sustainability Manager reduces the time and effort required for you to build the calculations you need, freeing you up to allocate your time toward strategic initiatives rather than number-crunching. Create calculation models with Copilot provides a user-friendly experience. It isn’t just about formulas, it’s about empowering sustainability practitioners to drive positive change. By simplifying the complex, together we can move closer to a greener, more sustainable future.

Demonstrate compliance with the energy data model in Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability

Energy is often a priority area for organizations when kickstarting their sustainability journey, largely due to availability of data and the ability for organizations to quantify both financial and carbon-related benefits. Customers, investors, employees, and the public increasingly expect organizations to demonstrate their commitment to sustainability and responsible energy management. Providing accurate and transparent energy-related data can enhance your organization’s reputation and potentially generate support from stakeholders.  

Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability provides a dedicated energy data model (preview) to help you track generated, purchased, and used energy for your portfolio, independent of the carbon tracking available within Sustainability Manager. This data model will enable you to unify, standardize, and streamline energy data collection and storage from utility bills, smart meters, utility solutions, and on-site energy generation systems, along with associated consumption patterns across multiple sites and geographic components, within the unified data model. You can utilize the energy lifecycle components to consolidate, standardize, and integrate energy to ensure data integrity, confidentiality, and compliance with regulatory requirements, thereby enhancing trust, transparency, and accountability in internal and external sustainability disclosures. By leveraging a centralized and structured energy model framework, you can demonstrate compliance with renewable energy targets and regulatory requirements. 

Improve carbon emissions reporting with activity to emissions traceability

In today’s sustainability-driven landscape, organizations turn to advanced solutions such as Sustainability Manager to monitor and mitigate their environmental footprint, with a primary focus on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and other pollutants. However, ensuring the accuracy and credibility of emissions data poses a significant challenge, given the intricacies of global supply chains, diverse data collection methods, and the potential for errors or discrepancies. This underscores the critical need to meticulously trace underlying activity data within Sustainability Manager to bolster transparency, accountability, and precision in tracking and reporting emissions data.  

Activity to emissions traceability (preview) is a new feature in Sustainability Manager that enables you to trace and link underlying source activity data to emissions records, provided those calculations occur within the system. This capability addresses the pressing need for accurate, transparent, and reliable emissions reporting by providing a comprehensive traceability mechanism for all activity records tied to carbon emissions quantification. Not only does this feature empower you to gain deeper insights into your organization’s environmental impact, but it also streamlines the verification process for external auditors, regulators, and stakeholders. Activity to emissions traceability also enhances the credibility of sustainability reports and minimizes the risk of misrepresentation or greenwashing.  

Create a Microsoft Power Query template to streamline and accelerate data import

The new Power Query guided experience is a comprehensive ingestion approach available within Sustainability Manager. It allows you to import data for multiple entities through multiple sources, all through a single import. Power Query templates in Sustainability Manager are available to help you with Power Query data imports. The templates automatically provide the right structure for all data attributes required to successfully import your data.

When designing a Power Query template, you can save and reapply a pattern for different activity details or sources. Power Query templates also support transfer of usage between users. An advanced user can set up a Power Query template for other sustainability practitioners to use on known input data shapes, as well as reuse a repeatable pattern to accelerate setup consistently.  

Let’s say a user wants to create a template for mapping electricity, but the patterns need to be repeated from different sources. The source could be a parameter, or the “evidence” is different but everything else is the same. Previously, you would have to re-create the Power Query ingestion, mapping, and more. Using a Power Query template, you can create once and enter only the parameters that need to change for a new connection. The advanced user can create the template but can’t run it if they don’t know the connection details. The sustainability practitioner can use the template to create the connection.

Further, with a new feature coming soon that will allow our growing list of partners to develop ingestion connections, you can package Power Query templates as a standalone package that can be distributed publicly and applied by customers. 

New Sustainability Manager features coming soon

Starting April 2024, a new what-if analysis (preview) feature will allow you to forecast the impact of business practice changes on your overall emissions. Look for this and other changes coming to Sustainability Manager that will help you make informed decisions on how to reduce your organization’s carbon footprint and achieve your sustainability goals.  

Learn more about sustainability solutions with Microsoft

• Bookmark Microsoft Industry Blogs: Sustainability for the latest updates, including new capabilities we’re introducing across Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability. 
• Want to learn more about Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability? Sign up for news and updates and try it for free.
• Discover solutions with Microsoft Sustainability Manager.
• Learn about new data solutions and generative AI advancements in Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability.
• Learn how to improve your circularity data with Microsoft Sustainability Manager.
• Learn about the new Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability Community portal, a vibrant hub for learning, connecting, and contributing.

The post Use natural language and generative AI to create calculation models, streamline data collection, and improve reporting appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs.

That’s why we’re excited to announce two new capabilities to optimize your Microsoft Azure emissions:  

• Azure Carbon Optimization (preview) is a free, cutting-edge capability that empowers Azure developers and IT professionals to understand and optimize emissions stemming from Azure usage. By providing insights into carbon emissions and offering recommendations for enhancing cloud efficiency, this tool aligns with the Microsoft commitment to environmental responsibility and supports you in achieving your cloud sustainability goals. 
• Microsoft Azure emissions insights (preview) in sustainability data solutions in Microsoft Fabric enables you to unify and analyze emissions data for Azure usage. By having access to your Azure emissions data in Microsoft Fabric, you can query and drill down into Azure resource level emissions for advanced reporting and analysis.   

Companies worldwide are committed to reducing their IT carbon footprint, championing a more sustainable future through initiatives focused on efficiency and cost optimization. Cloud sustainability is not only about reducing the environmental impact of cloud usage, but also about making smart business decisions that align to corporate values, adhere to regulatory requirements, and enable the pursuit of long-term business goals. To understand the impact of cloud computing on carbon emissions, precise measurement, trustworthy data, and robust tools are essential. 

That’s why we’re excited to announce two new capabilities to optimize your Microsoft Azure emissions:  

• Azure Carbon Optimization (preview) is a free, cutting-edge capability that empowers Azure developers and IT professionals to understand and optimize emissions stemming from Azure usage. By providing insights into carbon emissions and offering recommendations for enhancing cloud efficiency, this tool aligns with the Microsoft commitment to environmental responsibility and supports you in achieving your cloud sustainability goals. 
• Microsoft Azure emissions insights (preview) in sustainability data solutions in Microsoft Fabric enables you to unify and analyze emissions data for Azure usage. By having access to your Azure emissions data in Microsoft Fabric, you can query and drill down into Azure resource level emissions for advanced reporting and analysis.   

Both tools offer a holistic solution for organizations aiming to reduce their carbon footprint by optimizing specific resources or workloads within Azure.  

With Azure Carbon Optimization (preview), engineering and IT teams can use ready-to-consume insights and recommendations for optimizing their carbon emissions, all within the Azure portal. Microsoft Azure emissions insights (preview) enable data analysts and engineers to dive deeper into emissions data, allowing them to slice and dice the data and perform deeper analytics using Microsoft Fabric. 

Once your organization can access insights into the carbon emissions generated at the resource or workload level, reduction efforts can begin. This involves optimizing cloud systems for efficiency to benefit the environment and enhance overall performance. Azure administrators can already see a company-wide view of cloud emissions in the Emissions Impact Dashboard. To optimize your carbon footprint, you can take advantage of more granular insights into carbon emissions originating from specific resources or workloads. 

Like any major organizational shift, reducing carbon emissions requires contributions from every corner of your company. In this blog, we will not only explore the benefits of Azure Carbon Optimization and Microsoft Azure emissions insights, but also how the FinOps framework can guide your business through the complexities of carbon emission reduction to help achieve both your environmental and financial goals.  

Align IT sustainability with ESG regulations   

Organizations around the world are setting carbon neutrality goals for themselves, which are furthered by new environmental regulations and standards introduced by global government and regulatory bodies, with a significant driver being environmental, social, and governance (ESG) regulations. These governmental standards dictate ESG-related actions, reporting, and disclosures.

Microsoft provides offerings to help customers with their ESG reporting needs with tools and products available with Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability to help your organization collect and manage more ESG data and get fuller visibility into your environmental impact. Our goal is to help prepare you for any new reporting requirements by compiling a comprehensive ESG data estate. 

IT sustainability plays a pivotal role in a company’s ESG management strategy because it serves as a cornerstone for mitigating environmental impact, ensuring responsible cloud usage, and reinforcing the overall commitment to sustainable development practices. There are also direct economic benefits for reducing carbon emissions, such as long-term operational cost savings.  

Above all, organizations that proactively address environmental issues and reduce their carbon footprint will be better positioned for long-term success, especially in a business landscape where sustainability is increasingly important. 

Measure and reduce your emissions with Azure Carbon Optimization

Our free Azure Carbon Optimization tool, now in public preview and accessible through your Azure portal, is a window into your cloud resources emissions, ultimately leading to recommendations on how to cut back. It empowers Azure users to closely monitor and optimize their carbon footprint.  

Azure Carbon Optimization is designed to provide everyone in your organization, from developers, to architects, to IT professionals, with a resource-level view of emissions data. This empowers your engineers to take proactive measures to mitigate emissions and track progress right from the Azure portal.  

Azure Carbon Optimization uses the same carbon accounting methodology as the Emissions Impact Dashboard. Developers can work towards maximizing resource utilization while minimizing carbon emissions from the cloud, helping ensure that every deployed resource serves a purpose, eliminates waste, and reduces environmental impact. The tool also presents carbon emission reduction in equivalent terms that are easy for anyone to understand. 

Subsequently, it provides developers with carbon savings recommendations that are based on analyzing resource utilization. Suggestions include deleting or resizing underutilized resources. With these ready-to-consume recommendations, you can optimize your Azure usage, avoid carbon emissions, and promote sustainable development practices. This way, you not only enhance your environmental performance, but also achieve cost savings and efficiency.

Perform even deeper Azure emissions analysis with Microsoft Fabric

Microsoft Azure emissions insights, now in public preview, is a part of the sustainability data solutions in Microsoft Fabric. It helps unify, process, query, and perform deeper analysis of Azure emissions data. In addition to emissions data and related pipelines, Power BI dashboards are provided with Microsoft Azure emissions insights to drill-down and compare emissions data across subscriptions and resources. This helps IT administrators identify patterns in Azure emissions that evolve with time and change with Azure resource usage. 

Unified Azure emissions data empowers data analysts to enrich the emissions data with custom information such as department using subscriptions and resources. They can then query the data and build analytic models for interesting insights such as Azure emissions by departments and seasonality of emissions by usage.  

Leverage FinOps best practices to help optimize carbon emissions

Fostering a culture of accountability, efficiency, and governance across an organization stands as a key objective within the FinOps framework, which aims to help organizations optimize their cloud to maximize business value.  

Efficiency has a positive impact on innovation by freeing up resources and allowing organizations to invest more in modernization, research, and development. FinOps supports the customer journey by establishing a cross-functional team that includes finance, IT, engineers, and business leaders to create a culture of accountability where everyone takes ownership of their cloud usage.  

As ESG regulations compel adherence to complex emissions reporting requirements, integrating FinOps best practices can help teams to better manage and optimize carbon emissions. When viewed through the lens of environmental awareness, FinOps can assist with best practices that foster accountability, efficiency, and governance to enable data-driven decisions.  

Leveraging these best practices in tandem with Azure Carbon Optimization and Microsoft Azure emissions insights empowers your organization to be a catalyst for change, transforming cloud practices into a force for sustainability by helping track, analyze, and optimize emissions towards a greener, more responsible cloud ecosystem.  

Reach your sustainability goals with data-driven Azure insights

By employing these capabilities and adhering to FinOps practices, your organization can actively track, assess, and mitigate your carbon emissions. You’ll not only gain a detailed understanding of the emissions impact associated with your Azure resources, but also valuable insight into your compliance posture for any coming ESG regulations.  

Next steps

Visit the Azure Carbon Optimization documentation and our new learning collection to discover more about how to start leveraging the data-driven insights provided by Azure Carbon Optimization for a more environmentally responsible and efficient operation.  

Continue your sustainability journey with the Azure Well-Architected Framework sustainability guidance and explore Sustainability outcomes and benefits for business through the Cloud Adoption Framework. This guidance provides insights into end-to-end sustainability considerations in your cloud estate.   

Visit the documentation for Microsoft Azure emissions insights and this new blog to learn more about deploying it in your Fabric environment and get started with centralizing and analyzing your Azure emissions data. This capability can be leveraged to analyze the trends of your Azure emissions over time by subscriptions and resources. 

For more on how FinOps best practices can help you maximize your cloud business value while addressing the complexities of carbon emission reduction, explore Microsoft’s resources for FinOps:  

• Assess your organization’s gaps using the Microsoft FinOps Review Assessment.   
• Gain hands-on experience with Microsoft solutions that empower FinOps through the Microsoft FinOps Interactive Guides.  
• Explore a range of related Microsoft products and services on the FinOps on Azure homepage.  

The post Achieving sustainable growth with Azure and FinOps best practices appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs.

Gather and analyze all your ESG data in one place with Microsoft Fabric

With sustainability data solutions in Microsoft Fabric (preview), you can analyze your organization’s environmental, social, and governance (ESG) data together with your other enterprise data to inform more holistic decisions and better-targeted outcomes. Gather, harmonize, and transform sustainability data into meaningful, actionable insights, and use advanced analytics and powerful AI to help you prepare data for analysis, regulatory reporting, and AI-driven innovation.  

Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability

Empowering organizations to accelerate sustainability progress and business growth

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You can also use sustainability data solutions in Fabric to validate your data and track progress against publicly available data and industry benchmarks. All this comes with a shared governance model across various capabilities and a unified space for your data stewards and sustainability practitioners to interact through Microsoft Fabric.  

Four solution capabilities help you holistically meet your sustainability requirements:  

1. ESG data estate (preview) helps you centralize and standardize ESG data from your disparate data sources to compute, analyze, and disclose ESG metrics for various regulatory reporting and analytics requirements.  
2. Microsoft Azure emissions insights (preview) enable you to report and analyze your Microsoft Azure usage–related emissions data at subscription and resource levels. 
3. Environmental metrics and analytics (preview) help you generate custom reports, metrics, and analytics insights across carbon, water, and waste by connecting to your data in Microsoft Sustainability Manager.  
4. Social and governance metrics and reports (preview) provide insights, dashboards, and metrics to support your needs across various sustainability directives.   

Build your ESG data estate (preview) 

Sustainability disclosures, analytics, and reduction initiatives require rich ESG data sets that originate from disparate sources, and this data needs to be unified and standardized to improve its efficiency and value. sustainability data solutions in Microsoft Fabric (preview) provides pre-built data pipelines and lakehouses to combine social and governance data from different enterprise systems with environmental data from Microsoft Sustainability Manager and other systems. 

With your ESG data estate in place, you can process unified sustainability data to compute ESG metrics for sustainability disclosure requirements such as Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), Global Reporting Innitiative (GRI), and many others using provided prebuilt data processing artifacts. You can run this process on demand or on a schedule.

Built-in dashboards let you view data and insights from a variety of perspectives—such as by facility or operating unit—and use workflows to help prepare reports. You can mark the metrics required for CSRD and other disclosures and prepare the reports to share with auditors. 

Gain detailed Microsoft Azure emissions insights (preview) 

The typical IT efficiency journey for many organizations starts with migrating and then optimizing workloads in the cloud, which involves factoring potential emissions reduction strategies. Microsoft Fabric facilitates this process by enabling you to unify and analyze your Azure emissions data against your cloud usage.  

With all your Azure emissions data in Microsoft Fabric, you can query and drill down into Azure resource-level emissions for advanced reporting and analysis. Use pre-built data pipelines that ingest and store resource-level Azure emissions data in tabular data. And use Power BI dashboards to drill down and compare emissions data across subscriptions and resources, helping to identify patterns that evolve with time and usage.  

Note that all Azure customers can now easily access data and insights related to their cloud usage-based emissions by simply signing into the Azure portal and navigating to Azure carbon optimization (preview). This feature provides an overview of your subscription’s emissions data for the past 12 months and by service type—such as virtual machines or storage. 

On the Emissions Details page, you’ll see a monthly breakdown of the top Azure resources that contribute to your organization’s total emissions. By comparing this data to the previous month, you can see the percentage change and identify resources to turn off or utilize more efficiently. On the Emissions Reductions page, you’ll find recommendations to improve your organization’s cloud efficiency and sustainability. 

Enrich your understanding of environmental metrics and analytics (preview) 

To better understand your progress on reduction and other initiatives across carbon, water, and waste, you may need to define and compute custom metrics. Microsoft Fabric lets you connect to your relevant data in Microsoft Sustainability Manager and provides tables to query, compute custom metrics, and analyze the data further. You can enrich your sustainability data with the other corporate and business data for advanced machine learning–based analytics and leverage prebuilt Power BI dashboards for detailed insights and visualizations. 

Analyze your social and governance metrics and reports (preview) 

Increasingly, organizations are required to disclose their sustainability performance in social and governance areas—for example, for CSRD. To address this need, Microsoft Fabric enables you to unify and prepare disparate data from corporate systems handling human resources, health and safety, and corporate governance data in a single ESG data estate. From there, you can compute and report social and governance metrics required for disclosures and use Power BI dashboards to visualize and drill down into selected areas. 

Introducing Copilot in Microsoft Sustainability Manager: Quickly turn your sustainability data questions into insights 

When you’re working with disparate ESG data from across your operations and value chains, getting answers to critical questions quickly can be challenging, potentially slowing down progress toward sustainability goals. Copilot in Microsoft Sustainability Manager, now in preview, immediately delivers insights from your data based on natural language queries.  

Ask Copilot a question and it will work across Microsoft Sustainability Manager to quickly understand environmental data and provide an answer. For example, you can ask Copilot the right global warming potential (GWP) value for a given gas and assessment report (AR) version. With Copilot’s assistance, you can more confidently work through tasks like drafting reports on your organization’s emissions or CSRD environmental metrics for a quarterly update. Copilot helps you generate the draft reports, reducing your preparation time. 

Copilot can also help simplify and accelerate complex processes within Microsoft Sustainability Manager, such as creating a calculation model for your mobile combustion data. Within seconds, a calculation model is created using natural language, and within minutes these emissions are calculated, providing a more complete picture of reduction opportunities. 

Copilot in Microsoft Sustainability Manager is trained on Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability data schemas, making it an effective and knowledgeable tool for improving efficiency across various tasks.  

Magnify your visibility into your ESG data with AI-powered insights 

It’s important to trust the accuracy of your organization’s ESG data, which can be large and complex. The faster you can identify errors or missing data, the faster you can resolve or fill in the data. Intelligent insights in Microsoft Sustainability Manager, now available in preview, provides the visibility into your ESG data needed to help identify outliers, trends, and correlations.

See where data needs cleaning or where you need more complete data. This feature scans your organization’s data within Microsoft Sustainability Manager and identifies opportunities—both short-term and long-term—for reductions that align to your sustainability initiatives. Insights are based on historical trends, seasonality, and data anomalies. Looking deeper into the results, you can identify opportunities for reduction in your organization’s Scope 3 emissions.  

Learn more about how intelligent insights can help you make sense of an increasingly complex data landscape. 

Now generally available in Microsoft Sustainability Manager 

Track, manage, and report your water and waste sustainability data 

In addition to expanding AI capabilities, we’re continuing to evolve Microsoft Sustainability Manager to meet broader environmental sustainability objectives. Along with carbon emissions data capabilities, water and waste sustainability data capabilities are now generally available.  

Organizations can track and report their water accounting, water usage efficiency, and compliant water discharges across multiple facilities, safe water discharge regulations, and water usage disclosure standards. Microsoft Sustainability Manager helps you understand the sources and quantities of waste generation at your facilities and how the waste gets disposed of. This can further help you discover avenues to increase waste recycling for specific waste sources and reduce off-site waste disposal through landfills and incineration.

Simplify supplier data collection with ESG value chain solution  

We’re excited to announce the general availability of ESG value chain solution in Microsoft Sustainability Manager, enabling you to gather data more directly and securely from your suppliers. You can use the data to calculate suppliers’ emissions and gather partner-specific emission factors to calculate your Scope 3 emissions based on your consumption with those partners.

Experience the new capabilities in action with This is AI…for Sustainability  

Hear from Melanie Nakagawa, Chief Sustainability Officer, Shelly Blackburn, Global Vice President for Sustainability Go to Market, and Satish Thomas, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Industry Clouds during this free digital event. Get guidance on your sustainability journey and learn how to drive business transformation with Microsoft data and AI solutions. Watch the webcast on demand.

Learn more about sustainability solutions with Microsoft

• Want to learn more about Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability? Sign up for news and updates and try it for free.
• Discover solutions with Microsoft Sustainability Manager.

The post Drive sustainability transformation faster with new data and AI capabilities appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs.

Building on the existing data approval management (DAM) capabilities in Sustainability Manager, the new data approval management for circularity feature enables organizations to improve control over their incoming data to help ensure data continuity and quality. Read about how it works, along with other new features, enhancements, and resources designed to help your organization achieve its sustainability goals. 

Microsoft Sustainability Manager

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Authorize access and better manage your organization’s circularity data 

DAM for circularity allows you to configure Sustainability Manager so that records are staged in a pending state until approved by an authorized user. The pending data doesn’t affect calculations, analysis, and reporting. Authorized users can access the data for ingestion and manage the approval lifecycle of the data in entities.   

After authorized users review and approve, the data becomes available for all corresponding functions, such as calculations and reporting. You can enable DAM for all or only selected data type entities. Records in data type categories that aren’t enabled for DAM are auto-approved, including all records that were created in previous versions.  

DAM is disabled by default. When activated, all DAM-enabled records are created in a pending state. Pending records are still visible in record registers.

With the release of DAM for circularity, sustainability managers can now turn on the DAM flag for the following circularity data definition entities:  

• Circularity design principle  
• Sustainability item category SKU  
• Sustainability item packaging  
• Sustainability item SKU  
• Facility item production  

Collect and utilize data with the enhanced ESG value chain solution 

As they mature in their sustainability journeys, organizations need access to more value chain data to accurately and thoroughly account for their scope 3 carbon emissions. To report on the environmental impact of their entire operations, products, and value chain—including that of their partners—they need better visibility into their environmental footprint. But collecting data, especially from suppliers or other partners outside the organization, can be challenging.  

Digital technologies enable organizations to achieve greater transparency and accountability throughout their value chain, from raw materials to product creation to distribution. By adopting a data-first approach, you can drive efficiency, reduce emissions, and design out waste. 

The environmental, social, and governance (ESG) value chain solution already enabled you to collect emissions and product carbon footprint (PCF) data from your value chain partners and use that data to calculate your scope 3 emissions. With the latest enhancements to the solution, you can now also collect activity data from your value chain partners and use it to calculate their emissions, and you can gather partner-specific emission factors, enabling you to calculate your scope 3 emissions based on your consumption with those partners. Value chain partners can provide data directly in the survey or they can ingest bulk data through templates provided in the portal.   

Additionally, we’ve streamlined the process of requesting data from your partners. You can now ingest all your contacts and accounts together and create groups of partners. Through the new survey assignment process you can choose which data types to request, send out surveys to groups of partners, and auto-populate the necessary information for your partners using email templates.   

The ESG value chain solution is easier to use as a result of these enhancements. You can still configure the survey through Microsoft Power Platform to gather the data you need, and now you can also choose from new data types to collect—including partner activity data and partner-specific emission factors. Use the activity data to calculate and view your partners’ emissions in calculations, or calculate your scope 3 emissions directly using the partner-specific emission factors.  

Assess your organization’s emissions leveraging the 2023 National Greenhouse Accounts Factors 

Updated annually, the Australian National Greenhouse Accounts (NGA) Factors¹ is recognized globally as a crucial benchmark for assessing greenhouse gas emissions across various sectors, providing a standardized framework to measure and manage environmental impacts. Now available in Microsoft Sustainability Manager, the factors provide you with a powerful tool to better comprehend your carbon footprint in alignment with Australia’s specific metrics. 

Check out our Cloud for Industry Tech Talks

Let’s Talk Sustainbility: Tech Talks, is our expert-led discussion series designed to help organizations speed up their learning about Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability technologies. You’ll come away with valuable perspectives from the people behind the technologies, as well as product information, live demos, and recommended actions. 

Here are some of the new Tech Talks available for you to view on-demand:

• Getting to value quickly:
  Alejandro Gutierrez, Principal Product Manager, and Gina Kirby, Global Black Belt, discuss the different strategies for speeding up time to value with Microsoft Sustainability Manager. Designed to be deployed incrementally on an agile basis, you’ll learn about best practices based on successful deployments and get guidance on implementation.  
• Water sustainability:
  Sourav Chakraborty, Principal Product Manager, and Gina Kirby, Global Black Belt, discuss the increasing importance of water conservation in organizations to protect local ecosystems and help support compliance with environmental, social, and governance (ESG) disclosure standards and regulations. This show features a demo of the water sustainability modules in Microsoft Sustainability Manager and explains how to use the solution to achieve water sustainability goals. 
• Introduction to Microsoft Sustainability Manager:
  Robin Smith, Principal Group Manager, and Alejandro Gutierrez, Principal Product Manager, take you on a journey through the main capabilities of Microsoft Sustainability Manager. This show features a series of quick demos that highlight what’s new and demonstrate how Sustainability Manager can help you achieve your sustainability goals. 
• Connecting to your data sources:
  In the rapidly evolving landscape of sustainability technology, effective data connectivity stands as a linchpin for success. Host Shopen Patel, Senior Program Manager, guides you on an exploration of the intricacies of solution connectivity with Microsoft Sustainability Manager. Discover the various ways Sustainability Manager connects data sources and systems; its prowess in handling errors during data import; and the robust security measures in place to safeguard your data.  
• Sustainability solution extensibility:
  Shopen Patel, Senior Program Manager, and Vanya Kashperuk, Principal Group Engineering Manager, discuss the extension capabilities available in Microsoft Sustainability Manager, including examples of how to extend system behavior through configuration, customization, and integration. You’ll get a deep dive into features including custom dimensions, view personalization options, Synapse Link for Dataverse, and third-party connectors, as well as integrations with Microsoft Teams, Power Automate, and other technologies.   

Next steps 

• Join us on February 13, 2024 for a free digital event, This is AI…for Sustainability, with Melanie Nakagawa, Chief Sustainability Officer, Shelly Blackburn, Global Vice President for Sustainability Go to Market, and Satish Thomas, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Industry Clouds. Join the event for guidance on your sustainability journey and to learn how to drive business transformation with Microsoft data and AI solutions. Register here.  
• Bookmark Microsoft Industry Blogs: Sustainability for the latest updates, including new capabilities we’re introducing across Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability in February. 
• Want to learn more about Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability? Sign up for news and updates and try it for free.   

¹ Australian Government, Australian National Greenhouse Accounts Factors, August 2023.

The post New ways to improve your circularity data with Microsoft Sustainability Manager appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs.

Microsoft Sustainability Manager

Record, report, and reduce your environmental sustainability impact

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Empower your organization and others to do more through the sustainability community

We invite all organizations to help make the Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability Community portal a vibrant hub for learning, connecting, and contributing to collective progress. Check out community features like:   

• Forums for Sustainability Manager, Emissions Impact Dashboard, Environmental Credit Service, and Project ESG Lake.  
• User Groups to connect with peers and experts online and in person.  
• Ideas for improving Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability. Share your feedback, including feature requests, and vote for others’.  
• Customer success stories showcasing how our customers are delivering impact with Microsoft sustainability solutions. 
• Partner access across our growing global sustainability partner ecosystem.    
• Resources to help you get started, learn, and request support, including quick access to blogs and Tech Talks. Stay informed about the latest innovations and customer and partner successes and speed up your time to value with expert-led demos and discussions. 

Generate and store restatement reports for increased auditability of disclosures

Organizations are often faced with having to redisclose their environmental data due to errors, omissions, methodological changes, or changes in the scope of what was previously reported. Through restatement, when a material change has been identified, they can issue redisclosure or restatement of pre-disclosed data. This new capability in Sustainability Manager provides a version control system that can help increase the auditability of disclosures, enabling your organization to maintain a detailed audit trail for report changes.   

When generating new reports, you don’t want to lose track of previous versions. Your organization will need to store those copies and capture the reasons why restatement was required. With support for version history, you can access previously generated reports and tag those reports as being disclosed.  

Each time a new report is generated, Sustainability Manager will capture the reason provided, which is important for the record. Newly generated reports are stored automatically, and report versions can be tagged with a disclosure date. If there’s a need to regenerate the report for evaluation or disclosure purposes, you can now provide a supporting narrative including the expected impact.

Reduce waste and resource consumption with circularity data ingestion 

Circularity is an important means of reducing waste and resource consumption by keeping materials, products, and services in use for as long as possible. To help organizations measure and report their circularity performance, Sustainability Manager now enables the ingestion of data into circularity entities as well as circularity metrics reporting and visualization.   

Circularity data ingestion (preview) is the starting point for circularity tracking. This includes all the existing data ingestion methods, such as form-based ingestion, Microsoft Power Query, and Microsoft Excel templates. Use this feature to record:   

• The use of renewable, recycled, or reused raw materials for manufacturing finished products.  
• The degree of circularity in the finished products.   

Report circularity metrics to meet sustainability disclosures standards (preview). Existing reporting capabilities in Sustainability Manager have been enhanced to enable organizations to meet their circularity sustainability regulatory disclosure requirements, including those coming from Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). You can now generate at intervals that you set (monthly, quarterly, annually, or custom) and download custom reports to disclose your organization’s circularity metrics. These reports can be shared with stakeholders so they can track your organization’s progress toward sustainability goals. 

The circularity metrics provided in Sustainability Manager are aligned to standards such as GRI-301 and CSRD. These include:  

• Total weight and percentage of renewable, non-renewable, recycled, and reused raw materials in the manufacture of each finished good.  
• Degree of circularity in the finished goods.  

Visualize circularity data with the Insights dashboard. Now in preview in Sustainability Manager, new dashboards enable organizations to visualize their current and historical circularity data to drive insights and reporting. You can use the Circularity (input material) dashboard to track the weight and percentage of raw materials consumed to manufacture a finished good and the Circularity (finished good) dashboard to track the weight and percentage of total finished goods that follow circularity design principles. Roll up and drill down into the circularity data based on the selected reporting period, and filter by finished good or packaging material.  

Generate single emissions reports that prioritize specific data—Carbon Emissions Contingency Factor

When calculating carbon emissions, an organization might need to use a priority order with factor mappings, choosing a best match but finding an appropriate default when that’s not available. This enables the generation of a single emissions record in a calculation instead of a record per node, based on the calculation model requirements. 

Carbon Emissions Contingency Factor is a feature within calculation models and factor mappings that includes: 

• Hierarchy of factors. Set up a hierarchy of factors for emission calculations that begins with the most specific factors (such as factors unique to suppliers) and gradually moves toward more general factors. For example, arrange emission factors from exact suppliers or facilities to broader industry averages. 
• Prioritizing specific data. Highlight the most specific emission factor available in your calculations. This system aims to improve accuracy in carbon footprint calculation by prioritizing detailed information—favoring precise data over general estimates. 
• Shift from node-based reporting. As an alternative to generating an emissions record for each report node, use this new methodology to generate reports on the most detailed factor found in the hierarchy. 

To streamline the process and avoid generating multiple emission records for various report nodes, the exit on success checkbox enables much more flexibility and maturity in factor mapping use, toward further scaling calculations. 

Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability deployment expanded to India 

We’re excited to announce the deployment of Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability to the India datacenter region. This will enable our India customers to keep important business data within the country. Learn more about Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability international availability. 

Next steps

Want to learn more about Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability? Sign up for news and updates and try it for free.  

The post Introducing Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability Community portal and new Sustainability Manager features appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs.

We’re excited to announce the availability of Microsoft Sustainability Manager Intelligent insights (preview), an AI-powered tool that empowers organizations to perform deeper analysis on their emissions data. 

In this blog you’ll learn more about Intelligent insights, other recent enhancements to Microsoft Sustainability Manager, and get details about the new plans.

Intelligent insights

Find insights that matter the most

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Perform deeper data analysis with new AI-powered insights

When tracking their carbon emissions, organizations often miss valuable insights hidden in their data. Now in preview in Microsoft Sustainability Manager Premium, Intelligent insights enables organizations to extract and analyze such information from their emissions data through outlier, trend, and correlation insights. 

Intelligent insights is an AI-powered analytics tool that will be enabled during trial or after purchase of Microsoft Sustainability Manager Premium. 

Whether you’re identifying missing data or highlighting relationships between facilities, Intelligent insights empowers you to extract key insights needed to make more data-driven business decisions. 

In the Analytics area, Intelligent insights are divided into three categories:  

1. Outliers can show you sudden spikes or drops in your emissions, help you identify missing data, and reveal cases in which an aspect of your business is contributing an anomalously significant portion of your emissions when compared to others. 

   For example, Sustainability practitioner Amy from Contoso, a fictitious company, uses outlier insights to identify facilities within her organization that are missing data. Using an expected range, Amy can manually input estimates for the missing months, helping to improve the quality of Contoso’s overall reporting. 

2. Trends show the direction in which your data is trending, over time, either in an increasing or decreasing manner. Additionally, anomalous trends, grouped as subtypes of trend insights, can help you identify facilities or organizational units that are trending significantly faster than others in the same direction.  

   Continuing with our Contoso example, Amy uses trend insights to quickly identify facilities that are contributing a significant amount of the emissions for a particular region and connects with the facility managers to identify the causes and develop a mitigation plan.

3. Correlations highlight significant data relationships across contexts, helping you predict an outcome or identify a link between two or more conditions. 

   Finally, Amy uses correlation insights to track the progress of three United States facilities that recently transitioned to 100% renewable energy, monitoring their reduction over time to decide whether to expand this initiative to other facilities in the region. 

All insights are generated monthly and can be scheduled by an admin within Microsoft Sustainability Manager. 

Identify patterns and visualize emissions with key influencers and forecasting

Detailed insights for effective decision-making are paramount to achieving sustainability goals. Two new analytics enhancements help increase the level of intelligence delivered through Microsoft Sustainability Manager:  

1. Key influencers help organizations identify patterns showing increasing or decreasing emissions. As the patterns are established, you can quickly identify the most significant contributing factors driving emissions up or down. 

2. Forecasting enables you to visualize your organization’s future emissions, providing information to determine whether early intervention is required to meet sustainability objectives. 

Gain efficiency and productivity with the new Microsoft Sustainability Manager home page

Also new with this release, a redesigned home page, within Microsoft Sustainability Manager, facilitates learning, common actions, and access to helpful resources. Stay up to date on the latest features as well as those planned for future releases. Act on common tasks like goal setting, data imports, and calculations. Leverage video content, including demos and presentations, to boost your knowledge and efficiency. And gain easy access to configuration guides, product tours, help articles, and much more. 

Introducing Microsoft Sustainability Manager Essentials and Premium

Organizations have a wide range of sustainability data management needs. To better meet each organization’s particular data and analytics needs, Microsoft Sustainability Manager plans—Essentials and Premium—offer a choice of basic or expanded capabilities. 

As of November 1, 2023, organizations can choose: 

• Microsoft Sustainability Manager Essentials, which includes all the features available in general availability. Essentials capabilities help organizations build a solid foundation for managing their environmental sustainability data and preparing for sustainability reporting. 
• Microsoft Sustainability Manager Premium, which includes all the benefits of Essentials plus expanded capabilities in key areas such as value chain management, allocations, and AI, along with more data storage. Premium is designed for organizations that are looking to solve more complex reporting and reduction challenges and need to report across all the environmental categories while delivering insights for reduction.  

Try Microsoft Sustainability Manager Premium

Effective November 1, 2023, when you sign up for a Microsoft Sustainability Manager trial, you’ll gain access to all the features in Premium for 30 days. After the trial period ends, you’ll be prompted to choose between the two offerings based on your organization’s sustainability goals and business needs.    

• Learn more and compare the two Microsoft Sustainability Manager plans. 
• Look for our next blog coming in December 2023 to learn about more valuable updates, including the launch of our Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability Community portal. 

Want to learn more about Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability? Sign up for news and updates and try it for free.  

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