The 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, also known as COP26, is currently being held in Glasgow between 31st October and 12th November. Climate change has come into sharp focus in recent years, and this event represents major step towards reducing our carbon emissions and improving our planet for future generations, with world leaders gathering to debate our future.
A major step towards everyone reducing their carbon emissions is being able to measure them to find areas where can improve. We emit carbon in a vast number of ways in our daily lives, from travelling to heating our homes. We also emit carbon, and contribute to its emissions, when we are using technology. The various cloud services we are now accustomed to using all have a carbon footprint, and an impact on our overall carbon emissions.
Microsoft launch their Emissions Impact Dashboard
To help us understand the carbon footprint from the Microsoft cloud services we consume, Microsoft have released their Emissions Impact Dashboard. This is free to use for organisations with Microsoft products and services and contains key details around the organisations’ emissions.
Hosted within Power BI, the report brings together data relating to usage, emissions, and areas for improvement.
Divided into tabs it contains the following details:
- Dashboard
- Emissions details
- Emissions savings
- GHG Preparation report
- Usage report
- Calculation methodology
Each of these areas of the report can be filtered to a specific Azure subscription or service.
The report also provides the ability to estimate the emissions of an on-premise workload.
The report requires a Power BI Pro licence to run and there are a couple of steps required to get started which can be found here: Set up now
Once set up, the report can then be used to consistently report on carbon accounting and greenhouse gas emissions, optimise your decision making and estimate further emission reductions which could be gained from moving apps and services to the cloud.
Drilling into the report’s details will allow you to view carbon emissions over time, by service and by location.
This useful tool clearly demonstrates Microsoft’s commitment to help us all with the fight against climate change. If you are interested in setting up this dashboard for your business please get in touch.
