- Feature
- Track carbon footprint for fixed assets
- Availability
- Generally available (October 2026)
- Industry focus
- Data centre and colocation operators
Data centre operators have spent years focusing on operational emissions from electricity and cooling. Increasingly, customers and investors also ask about embodied carbon, the emissions associated with the equipment itself. Servers, UPS systems, generators, chillers and racking are all fixed assets, and all carry a carbon footprint. Business Central 29.0 lets that footprint sit alongside the asset in the finance system.
The industry challenge
A regional colocation operator might regularly buy:
- Uninterruptible power supply units and batteries
- Backup generators
- Cooling equipment
- Racks, cabling and containment systems
These are capitalized as fixed assets in Business Central. But their embodied emissions, often available from manufacturers' environmental product declarations, typically live in a separate spreadsheet, if they're tracked at all. When assets move between data halls or are disposed of, the emissions record isn't updated. Sustainability and finance teams end up with two versions of the asset base.
What Microsoft delivered in Business Central 29.0
According to Microsoft, Business Central 29.0 extends sustainability tracking to fixed assets, with fields and logic that capture emissions during acquisition, reclassification and disposal:
- Emission data flows into the sustainability ledger and integrates with existing sustainability reporting.
- Validation ensures emissions can be entered only for acquisition transactions.
- Posting rules keep the fixed asset and sustainability ledgers consistent.
- The fields are available only when sustainability features are enabled in set-up.
Where the value shows up
| Business area | Impact for a data centre operator |
|---|---|
| Embodied carbon reporting | Equipment emissions recorded with the asset at acquisition |
| Data consistency | One asset register for finance and sustainability |
| Lifecycle tracking | Emissions follow assets through reclassification and disposal |
| Customer and investor reporting | Credible data on the carbon in infrastructure |
| Control | Validation and posting rules protect data integrity |
As customers ask colocation providers for more detailed emissions data, being able to show embodied carbon by asset class or data hall becomes a commercial asset.
A worked scenario
Consider a colocation operator with three facilities that's upgrading UPS systems in one data hall (an illustrative example). The manufacturer provides an environmental product declaration with the embodied emissions per unit.
When the finance team posts the acquisition of the new UPS units, they enter the emissions value as part of the transaction. The figure flows into the sustainability ledger. Later, one unit is moved to another facility and reclassified, and its emissions follow it. When the old UPS units are disposed of, the disposal is recorded consistently in both ledgers. At year-end, the sustainability team reports embodied carbon in new infrastructure directly from Business Central.
Adoption considerations
- Enable sustainability features. The fixed asset fields appear only when sustainability is turned on.
- Gather supplier data. Ask suppliers for environmental product declarations or emissions data at purchase.
- Enter emissions at acquisition. Validation only allows emissions on acquisition transactions, so capture data then.
- Agree methodology. Decide how embodied carbon is calculated and reported, and document it.
- Align finance and sustainability. Make both teams owners of the shared asset data.
The bottom line
For data centre and colocation operators, the carbon story is no longer just about electricity. Fixed asset emissions tracking in Business Central 29.0 brings embodied carbon into the same system that already manages the equipment. It gives finance and sustainability teams one consistent view, and gives customers more credible answers.
If embodied carbon is becoming a question from your customers or investors, it's worth exploring sustainability tracking for fixed assets with an experienced Business Central adviser.
Source: Microsoft roadmap 573377