Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability

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2021: Анонс Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability

On July 14, 2021, Inspire Microsoft announced a cloud-based Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability solution that will help companies comprehensively measure and analyze their own carbon dioxide emissions and take more effective measures to reduce them. The solution will be available in pre-access mode later in 2021.

According to the company, reducing carbon emissions as of July 2021 is one of the key tasks for the whole world. At the same time, measuring the emissions of each particular organization is a difficult task, which is often solved unsystemically or inefficiently. Companies should be able to comprehensively assess their environmental footprint in order to reduce resource use and environmental impact based on this information.

Cloud for Sustainability enables businesses to automate and optimize these processes by providing a platform for aggregation to analytics and all necessary. data The solution includes SaaS tools that allow you to connect to data sources in real time, optimize data integration, account for carbon emissions, generate reporting, measure the effectiveness of achieving goals, and provide intelligent recommendations so that companies can take more effective measures.

Possible scenarios for its use include:

• IT directors will be able to report carbon emissions from cloud solutions, devices, and applications. All this data can be combined into one report.
• Companies will be able to offer their business customers an assessment scale for sustainable development to track progress towards carbon reduction targets, including emissions of types 1-3 (i.e., the company's own emissions, emissions from acquired energy and all other emissions).
• Users will be able to accurately identify specific sources of emissions and monitor whether they meet their reduction targets. For example, if the heating, ventilation and air-conditioning system does not meet the emission reduction target, the necessary action can be taken to achieve it.

Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability is based on Microsoft technologies such as Azure, Microsoft Dataverse, Power Platform and Power BI. The company also plans to involve an ecosystem of Microsoft partners to integrate specialized third-party applications, data sources and connectors into emission data sources.

Microsoft also announced an environmental commitment called "100/100/0." By 2030, 100% of Microsoft's electricity consumption will be provided with carbon-free energy (0% carbon) for 100% of the time. This complements existing commitments to enter into contracts for the purchase of renewable electricity to fully meet requirements by 2025, including the operation of data centers, buildings and campuses. As of July 2021, Microsoft signed agreements to buy approximately 5.8 gigawatts of renewable energy in 10 countries around the world, bringing the volume of renewable energy for current and agreed projects to 7.8 gigawatts.

Earlier, Microsoft announced its intention to completely switch to a negative level of carbon emissions by 2030. In the first year, according to company estimates, it has already reduced its carbon footprint by 6%, from 11.6 to 10.9 million tons. In addition, in May 2021, GitHub, Accenture and ThoughtWorks, with the support of the Linux Foundation, announced the creation of the non-profit organization Green Software Foundation, which aims to popularize an environmentally friendly approach to software development.