Microsoft 365 wants to help companies track their emissions

(Image credit: CC0 Creative Commons)

Microsoft has been making strides in helping companies track their emissions in recent months, an especially useful goal given the ubiquity of its tools in almost every large organization.

In October 2022, Microsoft introduced the Emissions Impact Dashboard for Azure, which does what it says on the tin: help Azure customers track emissions from their cloud usage, as part of its Power BI tools.

Now, the company is taking things a step further by introducing the Emissions Impact Dashboard for Microsoft 365, which performs a similar function but for a much wider audience.

Microsoft 365 Emissions — (Image credit: Microsoft)

Doing its part

"Organisations can use the Emissions Impact Dashboard for Microsoft 365 to quantify the greenhouse gas emissions associated with their organisation’s usage of Exchange Online, SharePoint, OneDrive for Business, and Microsoft Teams," the company says, noting that more apps will be added over time.

"For more than a decade, Microsoft has invested in reducing its environmental impact while supporting the digital transformation of organizations around the world," Microsoft's Peter Bergen wrote in a blog post announcing the preview.

"We’re committed to becoming a carbon-negative, water-positive, and zero-waste company by 2030, and we intend to be transparent with our customers about our progress toward these goals."

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The shift towards the cloud, especially during the pandemic, comes at a huge ecological and environmental cost; data centres are some of the most resource-hungry facilities in operation globally.

Google, Amazon, Meta, Apple, Microsoft, and others have all committed to "greening" their operations, usually by 2030, and we can only wait to see the progress and its impact.

In the meantime, Microsoft giving cloud users the ability to closely monitor their carbon emissions is a positive step forward.

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Max Slater-Robins has been writing about technology for nearly a decade at various outlets, covering the rise of the technology giants, trends in enterprise and SaaS companies, and much more besides. Originally from Suffolk, he currently lives in London and likes a good night out and walks in the countryside.