Carbon optimizations

Introduction

The Carbon optimizations document provides organizations with a holistic view of their Azure carbon footprint, combining emissions visibility with optimization guidance. It presents a structured summary of emissions along with actionable recommendations, enabling teams to make more sustainable and efficient cloud decisions.

Emission scope definition

Carbon emissions are classified into three scopes, as defined by the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, to provide a complete view of an organization’s carbon footprint:

Scope 1: Direct emissions from Azure datacenter infrastructure that supports your services, such as backup generators, facility operations, and on-site energy production.
generators, facility operations, on-site energy production)

Scope 2 : Indirect emissions from the generation of purchased electricity, steam, heating, or cooling consumed by Azure datacenter infrastructure that supports your services (e.g., grid electricity used to power servers, cooling systems, and network equipment)

Scope 3 : Other indirect emissions that occur across the value chain supporting your cloud services (e.g.,hardware manufacturing, transportation, supply chain activities, and end-of-life treatment of equipment

This classification helps ensure complete visibility into emissions across all stages of service delivery.

Document types

1. Summary document

Provides a high-level overview of carbon emissions:

• Grouped by subscription
• Compared across predefined time periods based on available emissions data

Include top 100 resources (Optional) - Highlights the top 100 carbon-emitting resources within each subscription, enabling focused analysis on key contributors.

Document structure

The Summary document includes the following sections:

• Executive-level carbon emissions summary for Azure subscriptions
• Temporal comparison of carbon emissions grouped by subscription

Sample document

The image below illustrates a sample carbon summary document outlining an executive-level overview of carbon emissions across Azure subscriptions:

2. Optimization recommendations document

Provides actionable recommendations to reduce carbon emissions:

• Grouped by subscription
• Based on observed resource usage patterns

Includes guidance such as:

• Removing idle or underutilized resources
• Rightsizing workloads
• Improving energy efficiency through optimized configurations

Document structure

The Optimization recommendations report includes the following sections:

• Executive-level carbon optimization summary for Azure subscriptions
• Carbon optimization recommendations grouped by Subscription

Sample document

The image below presents a sample Carbon optimizations document outlining an executive-level summary of carbon optimization insights.

Generate a document

Follow the below steps to generate Carbon optimizations document:

1. Select New configuration on the Azure Documenter homepage.
2. Enter a configuration name and click Next.
3. Choose the required subscriptions to be considered for reporting data and click Next.
4. Select Carbon optimizations as the document type, and choose any one between Summary and Optimization recommendations.

5. Define the carbon emission scope or apply filters in the Filters section, based on the selected report type.

6. Configure publish settings for the document.

7. Set up notifications to receive alerts when the report is generated.
8. Click Generate to initiate the document generation.

The document can also be generated using the Generate Document option available within any existing configuration.

Once the generation is complete:

• A URL will be generated for accessing the document
• The document can also be downloaded using the Download option