As the way we work continues to evolve, understanding the carbon impact of our working arrangements – including the tools we use to connect and create – is becoming ever more critical. Today, we are pleased to announce that customers can access their Microsoft 365 cloud emissions data via the Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability API (preview).

An image of the Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability API web portal demonstrating the new Microsoft 365 data source, availability status and connection button that you can toggle on or off.

The Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability API (preview) allows you to access greenhouse gas emissions associated with your usage of Azure and Microsoft 365 services by scope type, month, year and region.

For Microsoft 365, the data pulled through the API is consistent with the Emissions Impact Dashboard for Microsoft 365: datacenter emissions associated with your organization’s usage of Exchange Online, Outlook, SharePoint, OneDrive, Teams, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. The underlying calculation methodology has been verified by a third-party and computes all three of the scopes as defined by the Greenhouse Gas Protocol:

• Scope 1: Emissions that directly result from business activities, such as stationary combustion of fuels for backup power generation in cloud datacenters.


• Scope 2: Emissions that indirectly result from producing energy, such as exhaust from an electric power plant. This calculation is market-based, meaning that it takes into account Microsoft’s renewable energy power purchases.


• Scope 3: Emissions that indirectly result from all other business activities, such as those associated with manufacturing, shipping, and recycling the servers used in our datacenters.

Transparency and analytics are only part of the puzzle – what most of us truly want to do is find out how to reduce our environmental impact. Along with the general availability announcement of the Emissions Impact Dashboard for Microsoft 365 last fall, we also published guidance in this Microsoft 365 Sustainability whitepaper on how admins and end users can act to help influence Microsoft 365 datacenter emissions.

Get started today

Organizations can now configure access to both emissions related to usage of Microsoft 365 services as well as emissions related to Azure usage from the Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability API portal, discoverable on the Microsoft Cloud Solutions Center. Microsoft 365 admins can enable access to their data across the organization with role-based permissions. Learn more in this Cloud for Sustainability API (Preview) overview article and get started today!

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