Microsoft announced a new sustainability-focused cloud offering at its Inspire event this week. Cloud for Sustainability aims to help organizations simplify the process of measuring, understanding, and acting upon their carbon footprint. 

Cloud for Sustainability includes software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings that Microsoft says will connect to data sources in real time, increase the speed of data reporting, accurately count carbon, and utilize intelligent insights to help organizations take effective environmental action. 

“For organizations who adopt this infrastructure, it will allow them to track and report emissions across the value chain, and then use these same insights to find the most impactful and efficient environmental impact reduction strategies,” Microsoft Chief Environmental Officer Lucas Joppa said during the Inspire event.

Using Microsoft’s new service, CIOs will be able to report on IT greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that result from the cloud, devices, and applications. Data from various emissions sources can be compiled into one report for a comprehensive look at carbon emissions.

Microsoft’s sustainability cloud platform also tackles transparency. When companies use it, their customers can receive a sustainability scorecard to monitor progress toward environmental goals. Microsoft says this data will include all three emission scopes. 

Organizations measure their GHG emissions in three buckets, or scopes. Scope 1 includes direct emissions from any sources owned or controlled by the company, such as emissions from company vehicles and facilities. Scope 2 covers indirect emissions from services the company purchases, including electricity generation, heating, and cooling. Scope 3 emissions include all other indirect emissions from a company’s value chain, such as emissions from distribution, waste disposal, and suppliers. 

In addition to a holistic view of emissions, companies can break down emission data by source. For example, if an issue arises with an HVAC system that hinders progress toward a goal, the company can report the problem to the appropriate source using Microsoft’s cloud offering, and thus resolve the issue. 

“With Cloud for Sustainability, we are bringing together capabilities across our cloud and creating an entirely new business process category to help every organization address this very urgent need,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said during his opening keynote at Inspire. 

Microsoft’s sustainability-focused cloud offering comes in tandem with an updated carbon-free energy commitment, referred to as the 100/100/0 commitment. By 2030, the cloud giant aims to match 100% of its electricity consumption, 100% of the time, with zero-carbon energy purchases.

“Like other users, our data centers and our offices around the world simply plug into the local grid, consuming energy from a vast pool of electrons generated from near and far, from a wide variety of sources,” Joppa wrote in a blog post. “So while we can’t control how our energy is made, we can influence the way that we purchase our energy.”

Microsoft says it will purchase zero-carbon energy to match its consumption on an hourly basis. 

Microsoft isn’t the only company to publicize environmental commitments of this scale. Google announced a similar goal to use 100% carbon-free energy by 2030 last September.

“We’re thrilled to see another major company commit to operating on 24/7 carbon-free energy,” Google Chief Sustainability Officer Kate Brandt wrote in an email to SDxCentral at the time. “There is a growing consensus from business leaders to the White House that we must move beyond emitting and compensating and take steps to operate using carbon-free energy every hour of every day.”