A "free" dashboard to track your business carbon footprint
According to the Seattle Times, Microsoft has announced that they are providing a free add-on to their ERP software (Microsoft Dynamics AX) that allows companies to track their carbon footprint. Basically, if you’re a company that can’t afford to hire an environmental consultant to help you come up with a plan on how to track your carbon footprint you can use this tool instead. Something doesn’t seem right – doesn’t purchasing and running an ERP system cost more than hiring an environmental engineer to help you identify key performance indicators to track?
The ERP dashboard tracks four different indicators:
- Direct energy consumption
- Indirect energy consumption
- Total direct and indirect green house emissions
- Other relevant green house emissions
I searched around and found a link to the demo of the dashboard, you can click this link to MicrosoftDynamicsWorld.com and see it for yourself. For the last year, I’ve been tracking the thinkspace building utility bills and comparing them to the previous three years operating statements. The primary reason I’ve been doing this is to quantify the difference between being LEED certified and before we became LEED certified. I’m still trying to wrap my hands around all the other different metrics to capture like indirect energy consumption. Anyone out there got some suggestions?
Jessie Alan
Hi Peter,
Thanks for posting the screenshot and link. Exciting to see what msft is up to – looking forward to the day when a tool like this will also account for emissions related to travel and other activities. Energy use is a good place to start but it’s hardly the whole picture, right?
Might it be possible to get data on water use? This could be a good additional metric for ya. What about air quality – any way to measure that?
Cheers,
Jess
Jessie Alan
Hi Peter,
Thanks for posting the screenshot and link. Exciting to see what msft is up to – looking forward to the day when a tool like this will also account for emissions related to travel and other activities. Energy use is a good place to start but it’s hardly the whole picture, right?
Might it be possible to get data on water use? This could be a good additional metric for ya. What about air quality – any way to measure that?
Cheers,
Jess