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New instruments can play a important position in serving to organizations put together for CSRD.
It’s been a 12 months of many advances for Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability. Now, with the anticipated onset of latest environmental, social, and governance (ESG) reporting rules, together with these coming from the European Union’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), we’re saying highly effective new capabilities to assist organizations acquire and handle extra ESG information. Microsoft Sustainability Manager, a Cloud for Sustainability answer, is being expanded to present clients fuller visibility into their environmental affect throughout carbon, water, and waste. And new capabilities will assist clients create a complete ESG information property and put together to satisfy new reporting necessities.
Read on to find out about these newest updates. You may be part of Microsoft Chief Sustainability Officer Melanie Nakagawa and different sustainability leaders exploring the most recent tech improvements serving to firms deal with rules—June 15, 2023, at 10:00 AM Pacific Time after which on demand.
See how far Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability has come over the previous 12 months.
Faster time to insights with Project ESG Lake (preview)
With rising market and stakeholder stress to stick to new ESG reporting guidelines and greatest practices, in addition to rising demand for generative AI-based experiences, organizations around the globe are exploring methods to use and analyze information in new methods. The skill to foretell threat and measure and handle sustainability points throughout all the operation and worth chain hinges on the flexibility to sew collectively a posh set of disconnected information sources and companies and conduct a deep evaluation of sustainability, operational, and monetary information.
As a consequence, many organizations are rethinking their information administration programs and embedding sustainability extra deliberately into their core enterprise fashions and operations. The journey begins with organizing the info property—from gathering, aggregating, standardizing, and analyzing information to tracing information again to the supply to help audit actions.
Today we’re introducing Project ESG Lake to assist organizations higher handle and put together their information for holistic evaluation and finally advance their progress towards attaining sustainability objectives.
The answer gives an expansive ESG information mannequin with greater than 400 tables overlaying carbon, water, waste, social, governance, biodiversity, and basic enterprise areas. Using it, organizations can construct a complete information property, centralizing and reworking information from throughout enterprise items and provide chains into an ordinary schema that’s prepared for superior analytics and reporting. Greater visibility into actions throughout the enterprise will assist decision-makers enhance ESG and enterprise efficiency whereas boosting long-term competitiveness.
Project ESG Lake empowers organizations to carry collectively ESG information from numerous supply programs and standardize it to the ESG information mannequin to construct a centralized ESG information property.
With this answer, organizations can:
- Bring calculated emissions information from Microsoft Sustainability Manager or different third-party options into their ESG information property, leveraging information integration and transformation frameworks which can be supplied inside Project ESG Lake.
- Integrate their Microsoft-based emissions associated to their utilization of Microsoft Azure and Microsoft 365 into their ESG information property. The information may be reworked and standardized to the analytical ESG information mannequin utilizing Project ESG Lake’s transformation framework to arrange for analytics and reporting initiatives.
- Further enrich their information utilizing exterior datasets which can be supplied by Project ESG Lake throughout numerous sustainability classes, together with biodiversity, local weather threat, power, and ESG.
- Leverage standardized ESG information in Project ESG Lake within the new Microsoft Fabric, an end-to-end, unified analytics platform that permits builders to leverage the ability of generative AI in opposition to their information and helps enterprise customers glean significant insights from their information. Fabric can be utilized to entry, deploy, and compute the options and companies supplied by Project ESG Lake.
- Connect aggregated and standardized ESG information in Project ESG Lake to a set of Power BI reporting templates aligned to ESG information fashions. These can assist organizations speed up the evaluation and reporting of ESG classes and to visualise relevant metrics in Power BI. Power BI experiences and visualizations may be custom-made to deal with particular metrics and targets for reporting initiatives.
Enhanced ESG reporting capabilities to enhance regulatory preparedness
To prepare for rules, clients want to know their compliance posture, monitor required actions, and doc proof for upcoming regulatory initiatives. They additionally have to shore up information governance practices to arrange for audits and reporting. To deal with these wants, we’re rolling out focused options and finally will present a variety of prebuilt ESG reporting templates aligned to main ESG regulatory reporting requirements and workflows.
CSRD template in Microsoft Purview Compliance Manager: Starting in July 2023, clients can study what’s required to be CSRD-ready in line with preliminary European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS). ESRS rules are anticipated to be finalized within the second half of 2023. The template will assist organizations start to gather the info they want for ESRS reporting and can evolve as soon as new requirements are adopted.
Reporting and aim alignment: Also in July 2023, organizations can use new capabilities in Microsoft Sustainability Manager to assist acquire quantitative emissions, water, and waste information aligned to preliminary ESRS rules and monitor progress in opposition to Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) designations.1
Comprehensive emissions information administration to seize all the carbon footprint
To guarantee full accounting of their emissions affect, organizations want to gather and handle information for all classes of emissions throughout their operations and provide chains. Our last spherical of Scope 3 emissions calculation fashions in Microsoft Sustainability Manager—in preview in June 2023—permits clients to retailer, calculate, and report all 15 Scope 3 classes. Microsoft Sustainability Manager has supported Scopes 1 and a couple of since its basic availability in June of 2022.
Emissions associated to the processing of offered merchandise—Scope 3 Category 10 (preview): The processing of offered merchandise can have a major environmental affect, significantly in industries the place processing typically entails energy-intensive actions like heating, cooling, and refrigeration. With Scope 3 Category 10 protection, organizations can calculate emissions related to this processing and establish areas the place they’ll cut back their environmental affect and work towards extra sustainable practices. These can embrace reducing oblique emissions generated from the processing of intermediate merchandise offered by the reporting firm however processed by third-party producers earlier than use by the tip client.
Emissions from the usage of offered merchandise—Scope 3 Category 11 (preview): With the calculation of Scope 3 Category 11 direct and oblique emissions related to the usage of offered merchandise, organizations can establish potential climate-related dangers in addition to the aggressive benefits of growing low-carbon merchandise and dealing with suppliers to cut back emissions.
Emissions from franchise operations—Scope 3 Category 14 (preview): Calculation of Scope 3 Category 14 emissions—together with oblique emissions created by franchise operations—permits companies to establish alternatives to enhance their provide chain sustainability and cut back prices throughout all places. Managing franchise emissions can assist enhance model fame, buyer loyalty, and regulatory compliance whereas attracting and retaining franchises.
Emissions related to investments—Scope 3 Category 15 (preview): Financial establishments primarily report emissions in Scope 3 Category 15, which refers to emissions ensuing from their investments. This is an important exercise that may be fairly advanced because it entails gathering information from exterior sources and utilizing superior allocation strategies. To facilitate this course of, Microsoft Sustainability Manager offers a dependable methodology that may be straight adopted or custom-made to satisfy the particular wants of economic establishments.
Other emissions from gas and power—Scope 3 Category 3 (preview): Most organizations will quickly have to account for gas and energy-related emissions of their worth chain—for instance, coming from supplier-related actions in addition to transportation and distribution losses of bought power. With Scope 3 Category 3 protection, clients achieve the identical easy entry to accounting procedures used for Scope 1 and Scope 2 gas and power classes however with extra issues for worth chains. Also, emissions from this class will probably be aligned to the suitable scope for reporting functions. This contains power losses from transportation, distribution of bought power in Scope 2, and another utility or gas data not coated by Scopes 1 and a couple of.
Flexible greenhouse fuel international warming potentials evaluation (preview)
To generate extra correct calculations and assist enhance general reporting and compliance, organizations can choose a default greenhouse fuel (GHG) international warming potentials (GWP) evaluation report (inclusive of Assessment Reports 4, 5, and 6) set to make use of throughout all their calculations and nonetheless customise to a unique set as wanted inside a calculation profile.
Waste information capabilities present a unified view of waste sustainability information
Waste information ingestion in Microsoft Sustainability Manager (preview): Organizations have a number of waste amount and high quality information from totally different sources, and so they want to have the ability to effectively enter that information and put together it for waste sustainability use instances. They can now hyperlink new and beforehand entered waste information to related waste categorization and disposal reference information that has been entered into Microsoft Sustainability Manager. They may account for undigitized information sources, comparable to utility invoices and electronic mail or paper-based lab check experiences, utilizing waste information entry kinds.
Waste amount information visualization with Microsoft Sustainability Manager dashboards (preview): Organizations want detailed, present waste amount information to drive correct insights and reporting. They can now visualize up-to-date historic waste amount information and filter, roll up, and drill down on the info at facility or group ranges, by time, waste kind, and materials granularity.
Waste sustainability disclosure utilizing customary experiences (preview): Organizations that have to drive company waste sustainability objectives and meet exterior waste reporting necessities can now generate customized and regulatory waste sustainability experiences in Microsoft Sustainability Manager to reveal periodic waste amount information.
New water information capabilities serving to clients speed up water sustainability
Water income depth calculation (preview): Organizations want to know the effectivity of water utilization based mostly on general income and meet exterior reporting necessities. Using Microsoft Sustainability Manager, they’ll calculate and report the entire water consumed (in cubic meters) per web income throughout the group.
Water storage monitoring (preview): Where important portions of influx or outflow water are saved, organizations can report on whole water saved and modifications in saved water volumes to realize compliance with exterior reporting necessities. In the occasion of damaging values of water consumption, they’ll perceive whether or not services and organizations are actually replenishing water within the ecosystem.
Water sustainability goal-tracking (preview): Many organizations have advanced water utilization eventualities difficult their skill to make progress on water sustainability objectives. Microsoft Sustainability Manager helps them overcome this complexity by creating and monitoring water sustainability objectives from particular person services to their whole group.
Data lake export for Microsoft 365 and Azure emissions (preview): Through the Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability API (preview) portal, clients can now export present and historic Azure and Microsoft 365 emissions on to their Azure Data Lake Storage. They can combination emissions associated to their Azure and Microsoft 365 utilization straight of their Azure tenant to streamline analytics and reporting. This new functionality additionally gives flexibility to attach information to different Microsoft and third-party information administration and enterprise intelligence instruments.
Accelerate your sustainability progress with extra sources
Get information and updates. With rules rising, we’re shortly innovating round ESG monitoring and reporting. Sign up to obtain electronic mail updates.
Deepen collaboration with the Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability neighborhood portal—coming quickly. Connect and develop your information as a part of a vibrant buyer and accomplice neighborhood. The new Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability portal will allow you to share and discover solutions to questions, uncover beneficial sources, submit product suggestions—together with characteristic requests and monitor updates—and be part of consumer teams and boards to speak about your areas of curiosity.
Dive deeper with new Let’s Talk Sustainability Tech Talks—coming in July 2023. Want to know extra about Microsoft business options? Join expert-driven, action-oriented month-to-month discussions to satisfy the individuals behind the expertise and get high-level ideas with dwell product demos. Each present will finish with a information evaluation, a handful of takeaways, and advisable actions. Tech Talks will probably be based mostly on actual buyer questions, serving to you pace up your time to worth whereas serving to us refine the expertise so you could have a greater expertise. Stay tuned for particulars.
Explore accomplice sustainability options in your business. Find consultants and options that may assist you to deal with your distinctive ESG information administration wants, obtainable as we speak on Microsoft AppSource.
Accelerate your sustainability journey
Drive operational and price efficiencies to assist meet your sustainability objectives with Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability.
1 SBTi is a collaboration between the Carbon Disclosure Project, the United Nations Global Compact, World Resources Institute, and the World Wide Fund for Nature, offering pointers and requirements to assist firms set emission discount targets according to local weather science and Paris Agreement objectives. Learn extra.