All three major cloud providers now give customers a free dashboard that estimates the carbon emissions behind their cloud bill, and all three tools changed meaningfully in the past year — AWS launched a new standalone console, Microsoft is retiring its original dashboard in favor of a different tool, and Google added a reporting method it didn’t offer before. Here’s what each one actually measures, how to find it, and what’s changing.
At a Glance
| Provider | Tool | Status | Scopes covered | Access |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AWS | Sustainability Console (new) + Customer Carbon Footprint Tool | Sustainability Console launched March 31, 2026 | Scope 1, 2, and 3 | Free; Sustainability Console doesn’t require billing permissions |
| Google Cloud | Carbon Footprint | Active; added dual Scope 2 reporting | Scope 1, 2 (market- and location-based), and 3 | Free in-console; export to BigQuery incurs standard storage/query fees |
| Microsoft Azure | Carbon Optimization (replacing Emissions Impact Dashboard) | Emissions Impact Dashboard retiring March 31, 2027 | Resource- and subscription-level emissions; AI-driven reduction recommendations | Free, in the Azure portal; legacy dashboard requires a Power BI Pro license |
AWS: Sustainability Console and the Customer Carbon Footprint Tool
AWS’s original tool, the Customer Carbon Footprint Tool (CCFT), lives inside the AWS Billing console and has reported Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions estimates (using both market-based and location-based calculation methods) broken down by region and service. On March 31, 2026, AWS launched a separate, standalone Sustainability Console that expands on CCFT rather than replacing it: its main addition is that sustainability teams can view emissions data without needing billing permissions, plus customizable visualizations, a configurable fiscal-year start month, CSV report exports, and programmatic access via API and SDK. For a small team, CCFT inside Billing may still be enough; for a dedicated sustainability or ESG function that shouldn’t need finance-team access just to pull emissions numbers, the new console is the more practical entry point.
Google Cloud: Carbon Footprint
Google Cloud’s Carbon Footprint tool is free for all customers and reports Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions tied to covered Google Cloud services, broken down by service, project, region, and month. Its most recent documented change is dual Scope 2 reporting — showing both market-based and location-based emissions side by side, rather than market-based figures alone — which Google’s own documentation flags as new and describes as giving customers more transparency into how the number is calculated. Data can be exported to BigQuery (incurring Google’s standard storage and query charges) or Sheets for custom analysis, and the tool is integrated with Google’s unattended-project recommender, which estimates the emissions reduction from shutting down idle projects. A third-party sustainability consultancy has reviewed Google’s calculation methodology and found it a reasonable application of the GHG Protocol, according to Google’s own documentation.
Microsoft Azure: Carbon Optimization Replaces the Emissions Impact Dashboard
This is the most consequential change of the three for existing users. Microsoft’s original tool, the Emissions Impact Dashboard (a Power BI app requiring a Power BI Pro license), is being retired effective March 31, 2027 — after that date it will no longer be accessible and technical support ends. Its replacement, Carbon Optimization, is built directly into the Azure portal, is free for all customers, and works at a more granular level: emissions by subscription, resource group, resource, resource type, and location over the past 12 months, exportable via CSV or REST API. It also adds something the old dashboard didn’t: AI-driven recommendations (such as switching to more efficient VM SKUs or shutting down idle resources) with estimated carbon and cost impact shown before you act, plus emissions-equivalent framing (like “smartphones charged”) based on the EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Equivalencies Calculator. Until the 2027 retirement, Microsoft positions the two tools as complementary — the old dashboard for organization-wide reporting, Carbon Optimization for team-level, actionable tracking — but says to export your historical Emissions Impact Dashboard data before it disappears, since Carbon Optimization itself only retains 12 months of data at a time.
Why This Matters Even If You Don’t Have an ESG Mandate
- All three tools are free, already enabled, and sitting in a console most teams already have access to — there’s no procurement step to see the numbers for the first time.
- Azure’s and Google’s tools both now tie emissions estimates directly to cost-saving actions (idle resource shutdown, right-sizing), which means a sustainability review can double as a cost review.
- If your organization reports Scope 3 emissions for any regulatory or customer-disclosure reason, cloud compute is increasingly a named line item, and these tools are the primary way that number gets populated without manual estimation.
- Anyone currently relying on Azure’s Emissions Impact Dashboard for recurring reporting has a hard deadline (March 31, 2027) to migrate that workflow to Carbon Optimization or another export path.
Limitations to Know About
- Market-based versus location-based emissions figures can differ substantially for the same usage, depending on whether a provider’s renewable energy purchases are counted against your specific usage (market-based) or your region’s actual grid mix is used instead (location-based) — all three providers now surface both methods in some form, but they aren’t interchangeable numbers.
- None of these tools audits a third party’s claims independently in real time; they’re self-reported by the cloud provider using its own methodology, published separately from the dashboard itself.
- Azure’s Carbon Optimization retains only 12 months of data at a time — long-term historical tracking requires your own regular export process, not reliance on the tool’s built-in history.
Bottom Line
If you run workloads on any of the big three clouds, the carbon-reporting tool is already available to you at no extra cost — the main action item is knowing which one is current. AWS customers get a genuinely new, more accessible console on top of their existing tool. Google Cloud customers get a more transparent Scope 2 breakdown than before. Azure customers have a firm migration deadline: March 31, 2027 is when the old dashboard disappears, and Carbon Optimization is where that reporting needs to move.
Sources
- AWS — “AWS launches Sustainability console” announcement
- AWS — Customer Carbon Footprint Tool overview
- Google Cloud — Carbon Footprint overview
- Google Cloud — Carbon Footprint reporting methodology
- Microsoft Learn — Azure Carbon Optimization overview
- Microsoft Learn — Emissions Impact Dashboards module
