New instruments can play a important position in serving to organizations put together for CSRD.
It’s been a yr 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 Company Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), we’re saying highly effective new capabilities to assist organizations accumulate and handle extra ESG knowledge. Microsoft Sustainability Supervisor, a Cloud for Sustainability answer, is being expanded to offer prospects fuller visibility into their environmental impression throughout carbon, water, and waste. And new capabilities will assist prospects create a complete ESG knowledge property and put together to satisfy new reporting necessities.
Learn on to study these newest updates. It’s also possible to be part of Microsoft Chief Sustainability Officer Melanie Nakagawa and different sustainability leaders exploring the newest 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 yr.
Quicker time to insights with Mission ESG Lake (preview)
With growing market and stakeholder strain to stick to new ESG reporting guidelines and finest practices, in addition to rising demand for generative AI-based experiences, organizations all over the world are exploring methods to use and analyze knowledge in new methods. The flexibility to foretell danger and measure and handle sustainability points throughout the whole operation and worth chain hinges on the flexibility to sew collectively a posh set of disconnected knowledge sources and companies and conduct a deep evaluation of sustainability, operational, and monetary knowledge.
Consequently, many organizations are rethinking their knowledge administration techniques 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 knowledge to tracing knowledge again to the supply to help audit actions.
At this time we’re introducing Mission ESG Lake to assist organizations higher handle and put together their knowledge for holistic evaluation and in the end advance their progress towards attaining sustainability objectives.
The answer affords an expansive ESG knowledge mannequin with greater than 400 tables masking carbon, water, waste, social, governance, biodiversity, and common enterprise areas. Utilizing it, organizations can construct a complete knowledge property, centralizing and remodeling knowledge from throughout enterprise items and provide chains into an ordinary schema that’s prepared for superior analytics and reporting. Higher visibility into actions throughout the enterprise will assist decision-makers enhance ESG and enterprise efficiency whereas boosting long-term competitiveness.
Mission ESG Lake empowers organizations to carry collectively ESG knowledge from numerous supply techniques and standardize it to the ESG knowledge mannequin to construct a centralized ESG knowledge property.
With this answer, organizations can:
- Convey calculated emissions knowledge from Microsoft Sustainability Supervisor or different third-party options into their ESG knowledge property, leveraging knowledge integration and transformation frameworks which might be provided inside Mission ESG Lake.
- Combine their Microsoft-based emissions associated to their utilization of Microsoft Azure and Microsoft 365 into their ESG knowledge property. The information may be reworked and standardized to the analytical ESG knowledge mannequin utilizing Mission ESG Lake’s transformation framework to organize for analytics and reporting initiatives.
- Additional enrich their knowledge utilizing exterior datasets which might be provided by way of Mission ESG Lake throughout numerous sustainability classes, together with biodiversity, local weather danger, vitality, and ESG.
- Leverage standardized ESG knowledge in Mission ESG Lake within the new Microsoft Material, an end-to-end, unified analytics platform that allows builders to leverage the facility of generative AI in opposition to their knowledge and helps enterprise customers glean significant insights from their knowledge. Material can be utilized to entry, deploy, and compute the options and companies provided by Mission ESG Lake.
- Join aggregated and standardized ESG knowledge in Mission ESG Lake to a set of Energy BI reporting templates aligned to ESG knowledge fashions. These will help organizations speed up the evaluation and reporting of ESG classes and to visualise relevant metrics in Energy BI. Energy BI reviews 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, prospects want to know their compliance posture, observe required actions, and doc proof for upcoming regulatory initiatives. In addition they have to shore up knowledge governance practices to organize for audits and reporting. To deal with these wants, we’re rolling out focused options and in the end will present a variety of prebuilt ESG reporting templates aligned to main ESG regulatory reporting requirements and workflows.
CSRD template in Microsoft Purview Compliance Supervisor: Beginning in July 2023, prospects can be taught what’s required to be CSRD-ready based on preliminary European Sustainability Reporting Requirements (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 objective alignment: Additionally in July 2023, organizations can use new capabilities in Microsoft Sustainability Supervisor to assist accumulate quantitative emissions, water, and waste knowledge aligned to preliminary ESRS rules and observe progress in opposition to Science Primarily based Targets initiative (SBTi) designations.1
Complete emissions knowledge administration to seize the whole carbon footprint
To make sure full accounting of their emissions impression, organizations want to gather and handle knowledge for all classes of emissions throughout their operations and provide chains. Our closing spherical of Scope 3 emissions calculation fashions in Microsoft Sustainability Supervisor—in preview in June 2023—allows prospects to retailer, calculate, and report all 15 Scope 3 classes. Microsoft Sustainability Supervisor has supported Scopes 1 and a pair of since its common availability in June of 2022.
Emissions associated to the processing of offered merchandise—Scope 3 Class 10 (preview): The processing of offered merchandise can have a big environmental impression, significantly in industries the place processing typically entails energy-intensive actions like heating, cooling, and refrigeration. With Scope 3 Class 10 protection, organizations can calculate emissions related to this processing and establish areas the place they will cut back their environmental impression and work towards extra sustainable practices. These can embody decreasing 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 shopper.
Emissions from the usage of offered merchandise—Scope 3 Class 11 (preview): With the calculation of Scope 3 Class 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 creating low-carbon merchandise and dealing with suppliers to scale back emissions.
Emissions from franchise operations—Scope 3 Class 14 (preview): Calculation of Scope 3 Class 14 emissions—together with oblique emissions created by franchise operations—allows companies to establish alternatives to enhance their provide chain sustainability and cut back prices throughout all places. Managing franchise emissions will help enhance model fame, buyer loyalty, and regulatory compliance whereas attracting and retaining franchises.
Emissions related to investments—Scope 3 Class 15 (preview): Monetary establishments primarily report emissions in Scope 3 Class 15, which refers to emissions ensuing from their investments. That is a vital exercise that may be fairly advanced because it entails gathering knowledge from exterior sources and utilizing superior allocation strategies. To facilitate this course of, Microsoft Sustainability Supervisor gives a dependable methodology that may be instantly adopted or custom-made to satisfy the particular wants of economic establishments.
Different emissions from gas and vitality—Scope 3 Class 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 vitality. With Scope 3 Class 3 protection, prospects acquire the identical easy entry to accounting procedures used for Scope 1 and Scope 2 gas and vitality classes however with extra issues for worth chains. Additionally, emissions from this class might be aligned to the suitable scope for reporting functions. This contains vitality losses from transportation, distribution of bought vitality in Scope 2, and another utility or gas info not coated by Scopes 1 and a pair of.
Versatile greenhouse gasoline international warming potentials evaluation (preview)
To generate extra correct calculations and assist enhance total reporting and compliance, organizations can choose a default greenhouse gasoline (GHG) international warming potentials (GWP) evaluation report (inclusive of Evaluation Experiences 4, 5, and 6) set to make use of throughout all their calculations and nonetheless customise to a distinct set as wanted inside a calculation profile.
Waste knowledge capabilities present a unified view of waste sustainability knowledge
Waste knowledge ingestion in Microsoft Sustainability Supervisor (preview): Organizations have numerous waste amount and high quality knowledge from completely different sources, they usually want to have the ability to effectively enter that knowledge and put together it for waste sustainability use instances. They’ll now hyperlink new and beforehand entered waste knowledge to related waste categorization and disposal reference knowledge that has been entered into Microsoft Sustainability Supervisor. They’ll additionally account for undigitized knowledge sources, resembling utility invoices and e-mail or paper-based lab check reviews, utilizing waste knowledge entry kinds.
Waste amount knowledge visualization with Microsoft Sustainability Supervisor dashboards (preview): Organizations want detailed, present waste amount knowledge to drive correct insights and reporting. They’ll now visualize up-to-date historic waste amount knowledge 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 commonplace reviews (preview): Organizations that have to drive company waste sustainability objectives and meet exterior waste reporting necessities can now generate customized and regulatory waste sustainability reviews in Microsoft Sustainability Supervisor to reveal periodic waste amount knowledge.
New water knowledge capabilities serving to prospects speed up water sustainability
Water income depth calculation (preview): Organizations want to know the effectivity of water utilization based mostly on total income and meet exterior reporting necessities. Utilizing Microsoft Sustainability Supervisor, they will calculate and report the entire water consumed (in cubic meters) per internet income throughout the group.
Water storage monitoring (preview): The place vital portions of influx or outflow water are saved, organizations can report on complete water saved and modifications in saved water volumes to attain compliance with exterior reporting necessities. Within the occasion of adverse values of water consumption, they will perceive whether or not services and organizations are really replenishing water within the ecosystem.
Water sustainability goal-tracking (preview): Many organizations have advanced water utilization situations difficult their skill to make progress on water sustainability objectives. Microsoft Sustainability Supervisor helps them overcome this complexity by creating and monitoring water sustainability objectives from particular person services to their whole group.
Information lake export for Microsoft 365 and Azure emissions (preview): By way of the Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability API (preview) portal, prospects can now export present and historic Azure and Microsoft 365 emissions on to their Azure Information Lake Storage. They’ll combination emissions associated to their Azure and Microsoft 365 utilization instantly of their Azure tenant to streamline analytics and reporting. This new functionality additionally affords flexibility to attach knowledge to different Microsoft and third-party knowledge administration and enterprise intelligence instruments.
Speed up your sustainability progress with extra sources
Get information and updates. With rules rising, we’re rapidly innovating round ESG monitoring and reporting. Enroll to obtain e-mail updates.
Deepen collaboration with the Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability neighborhood portal—coming quickly. Join and develop your data as a part of a vibrant buyer and associate neighborhood. The brand 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 observe updates—and be part of consumer teams and boards to speak about your areas of curiosity.
Dive deeper with new Let’s Speak Sustainability Tech Talks—coming in July 2023. Need to know extra about Microsoft trade options? Be part of expert-driven, action-oriented month-to-month discussions to satisfy the folks behind the know-how and get high-level ideas with stay product demos. Every present will finish with a data evaluation, a handful of takeaways, and advisable actions. Tech Talks might be based mostly on actual buyer questions, serving to you velocity up your time to worth whereas serving to us refine the know-how so you will have a greater expertise. Keep tuned for particulars.
Discover associate sustainability options to your trade. Discover specialists and options that may allow you to deal with your distinctive ESG knowledge administration wants, out there at the moment on Microsoft AppSource.
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1SBTi is a collaboration between the Carbon Disclosure Mission, the United Nations World Compact, World Assets Institute, and the World Huge Fund for Nature, offering tips and requirements to assist firms set emission discount targets according to local weather science and Paris Settlement objectives. Study extra.
