What is Azure carbon optimization (Preview)

  • Article

Azure carbon optimization is a service that helps you measure and minimize the carbon impact of your Azure footprint. With it, you can:

  • Find opportunities to optimize your resource utilization to lower your carbon emissions and costs.
  • Track and analyze the emissions associated with your Azure resources and subscriptions.
  • Access carbon data and insights through APIs and exports.

Azure carbon optimization is part of Microsoft's commitment to sustainability and environmental responsibility. By using it, you can align your cloud strategy with your sustainability goals and demonstrate your leadership in addressing the global climate challenge.

Key features of Azure carbon optimization

  • Granular emissions data within Azure Portal - Azure carbon optimization provides granular emissions data up to the resource level from last 12 months’ usage of all your Azure products and services. To view emissions data for your subscriptions, go to the Azure portal and search for Carbon Optimization.
  • Access based on Azure RBAC: Emissions data access is based on Azure roles. You must be assigned at least one of the owner, contributor, or carbon optimization roles at the subscription level to view emissions data for a given subscription.
  • Breakdowns by subscription, resource group, resource, service, and location - You can view different pivots of emissions data to understand how your carbon emissions are distributed across different dimensions and extract insights on which dimensions emit the most carbon.
  • REST APIs and exports - You can also access your emissions data programmatically using REST APIs or export it to CSV to integrate it with other tools or platforms for further analysis or reporting.
  • Carbon reduction recommendations - Azure carbon optimization provides optimization recommendations that are generated based on your resources’ utilization. The recommendations include switching to more efficient SKUs or reducing idle or unused resources. You can view the estimated carbon savings and cost implications of each recommendation.

Other Microsoft sustainability offerings

Azure carbon optimization is one product among a suite of Microsoft products that help customers measure and reduce their carbon footprint. Products related to cloud carbon management are listed below. Each product is designed to meet specific needs and use cases for different types of sustainability users.

  • Microsoft Sustainability Manager is an extensible solution providing comprehensive, integrated, and automated sustainability management for organizations at any stage of their sustainability journey. Microsoft Sustainability Manager enables organizations to more efficiently record, report, and reduce their emissions and water or waste impact.
  • Emissions Impact Dashboard is available as a Power BI dashboard and provides access to all cloud emissions data under an enrollment ID. The emissions impact dashboard can be used by central sustainability teams managing an organization's cloud sustainability goals.
  • Microsoft Azure emissions insights (preview) is built on Microsoft Fabric and created for advanced sustainability analytics and reporting.
  • Azure carbon optimization, in the Azure portal is built for IT professionals and developers to make emissions optimization decisions using emissions insights and recommendations. Access is based on Azure RBAC.

These products work together to provide a comprehensive solution for cloud carbon accounting and management. For example, Emissions Impact Dashboard for Azure can be used for company wide cloud emissions analysis and Microsoft Azure emissions data estate can be used for customizing the data to create different views or to join Azure emissions data with any other data sources. Azure carbon optimization can be used when drilling into emissions optimization of a particular business area, such as application, service, or team level emissions. Microsoft Sustainability Manager can provide a broader view of the organization's sustainability performance and goals.

Coverage of Azure resources

Azure Carbon Optimization provides emissions data for all Azure resource types. Emissions calculation is based on billing and usage of these resources.

Emissions calculation methodology

Azure carbon optimization adopts the same calculation methodology as the Emissions Impact Dashboard and the Cloud for Sustainability API. The methodology, ensures consistency, transparency, and easy comparison of emissions data across Azure emissions shown for different Microsoft solutions.

Cost

Azure carbon optimization is available at no cost to all Azure users during the preview period.

Data availability

Emissions data is provided at a monthly grain for the last 12 months. Data for the previous month is available by the 19th day of the current month. For example, data for the month of February will be available by March 19.

Next steps