Plan and prepare for Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability in 2023 release wave 2
Important
This content is archived and is not being updated. For the latest documentation, go to What's new in Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability overview. For the latest release plans, go to Dynamics 365, Power Platform, and Cloud for Industry release plans.
Important
The 2023 release wave 2 plan covers all new functionalities planned to be delivered to market from October 2023 to March 2024. In this article, you'll find the product overview and what's new and planned for Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability.
Overview
Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability empowers organizations to accelerate sustainability progress by bringing together a growing set of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) capabilities from Microsoft Azure, Microsoft 365, Microsoft Dynamics 365, and solutions from a global ecosystem of partners.
With the growing popularity of Cloud for Sustainability and new reporting requirements starting in the coming year, we're investing in multiple areas to help your sustainability initiatives and reporting. We're incorporating new features to enable and simplify the EU's Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) requirements. We're expanding on our improved data ingestion experience, including enhancements to data approval management and more third-party connectors. Our new Project ESG Lake will help you aggregate your ESG data in one place and provide rich analysis and insights. We're also adding features for recording and reporting on water usage and calculating waste intensity. Environmental Credit Service, which was released in preview in 2022, will be available for general availability this year. Finally, we're bringing our AI capabilities to Cloud for Sustainability to provide what-if analysis scenarios and other important insights.
You can explore international availability of Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability through the Industry Cloud availability report.
For official product documentation and training for Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability, go to:
- Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability docs
- Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability training on Microsoft Learn
Updates to Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability 2023 release wave 2
Investment areas
Calculate sustainability footprint
Streamline data ingestion, integration, and calculations. Provide a blend of data ingestion methods — from manual input or file imports to automated, direct connections to data sources — to collect data from any business, enterprise resource planning system, or platform. Centralize this data and calculate the emissions using specialized factors and formulas.
We’re investing in the following areas for calculating your sustainability footprint:
- Energy data model, data import, and reporting.
- Sustainability calculation services.
Data integration and calculations
Provide a blend of data ingestion methods — from manual input or file imports to automated, direct connections to data sources — to collect data from any business, enterprise resource planning system, or platform. Centralize this data and calculate the emissions using specialized factors and formulas.
We’re investing in calculations and data integration enhancements for carbon, water, and waste, the ability to restate emissions, data approval management enhancements, and more third-party connectors.
Increase value chain transparency
Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability helps you get a clear view of your value chain. You can digitally connect your supply chains to strengthen collaboration, accountability, transparency, and reporting. You'll gain visibility into the activities of your vendors and partners and strengthen upstream and downstream collaboration across value chains. This visibility provides transparency about product attributes and emissions activities to help you drive supply chain efficiencies, reduce emissions, and design out waste.
Invest in ESG innovation
Make strategic investments to support your environmental, social, and governance (ESG) strategy with Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability. Our products and services help you to deliver operational excellence, sustainability performance, and business growth.
ESG innovation solutions help identify opportunities to create efficiencies and build resilience by revamping business practices, driving the organizational and operational transformation required to build resilience in a changing economy.
Provide data governance
We're helping organizations leverage data governance to drive greater transparency, accountability, and more sustainable outcomes. Our solutions support audit activities by tracing reporting data back to the source, including all calculations and actions taken against the data. They provide better workflow management and governance by facilitating efficient data use and sharing with prebuilt processes, policies, roles, and standards. We're growing our data governance capabilities with solutions like the Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability data model, sustainability data solutions in Microsoft Fabric, sustainability reporting capabilities, and more.
Our data governance solutions operationalize corporate governance practices and performance, supporting greater transparency and accountability. They provide audit and traceability to support audit activities by tracing reporting data back to the source, including all calculations and actions taken against the data. They also deliver better workflow management and governance by providing efficient data use and sharing with prebuilt processes, policies, roles, and standards.
Report impact and progress
This capability helps your organization to gather data for disclosure metrics and prepare CSRD metrics with Sustainability data solutions in Microsoft Fabric. You can deliver more reliable reports about your sustainability impact and progress. Our solutions provide organizations with the capability to export accurate, timely, and comprehensive sustainability reports to demonstrate progress to stakeholders.
We enable regulatory and voluntary agency reporting templates. For example, our configurable preparatory CSRD templates ease preparation for audits and quantitative regulatory and voluntary agency reporting.
To learn more about the entire set of capabilities being delivered during this release wave, check out the release plan for Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability below: