Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability data model

Article
04/03/2023

This article introduces the Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability data model. The Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability water data model and Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability waste data model are extensions of this data model.

This documentation helps customers align sustainability data with the Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability data model so that they can optimize the extraction, transformation, and loading pipeline into Microsoft Dataverse. The imported data will be ready for consumption by Microsoft Sustainability Manager, so that it can further process the data and produce actionable output, such as emission reduction opportunities and other analyses.

The Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability data model is the data foundation for Microsoft Sustainability Manager. Customers can also use it independently to build other sustainability solutions. We recommend that you use this documentation when you design sustainability data pipelines. Customer activities that produce greenhouse gas emissions, such as mobile combustion activities, can then be loaded and used by Microsoft Sustainability Manager or other Dataverse applications.

The schema was automatically generated and represents the Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability data model as it's deployed in Dataverse.

Goal

Empower customers to optimize their data pipelines so that Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability can use them across internal and external organizations for collaboration and reporting activities.

Sample use cases

The customer pre-transforms incoming purchased energy activity into a format that Microsoft Sustainability Manager can consume directly.
The customer shares the required schema with a provider or supplier to receive scope 3 emissions in a format that Microsoft Sustainability Manager can consume directly.
The customer uses Microsoft Sustainability Manager output together with data from financial operations to create extensive reports for their stakeholders.
The customer uses Microsoft Sustainability Manager output to attach custom AI processing and produce extended insights for emission reductions.
The customer is a system integrator who uses Microsoft Sustainability Manager on behalf of multiple customers and must align all those customers to a common schema.
The customer uses the data model for semantic reference to better understand how to model their data.

Entity relationship diagram

Select the magnifying glass icon at the bottom right of the diagram to zoom in.

Product carbon footprint data model (Preview)

Important

Some or all of this functionality is available as part of a preview release. The content and the functionality are subject to change.

The product carbon footprint data model (Preview) is based on Pathfinder Framework Version 2 from World Business Council For Sustainable Development (WBCSD). The data model enables the storage of product carbon footprints (PCFs) and includes relationships between some scope 3 tables and PCFs. These relationships allow you to associate activities with a relevant PCF for scenarios when an emission should be attributed to a product.

In addition, the tables for scope 3, categories 1 and 2 (purchased goods and services and capital goods) contain a reference to PCF (labeled Reporting) intended for scenarios when a PCF should be used to compute an emission.