Södra plants a seed for climate neutrality with Microsoft Sustainability Manager

Building a forest legacy

When someone mentions the forest industry, you may imagine the tangy scent of fresh wood chips or the pleasing proportions of a beautifully crafted chair … or the welcoming façade of a graceful home. But that vision is just the tip of the iceberg—or rather, the tree. For Swedish forest services association Södra, no part of the tree must ever be wasted, and replanting is an integral part of family forestry.

Södra is a unique organization, acting as a “bridge” between 52,000 forest owners in Sweden and the industries that depend on their forests for wood. Many of the forest owners manage stands that have been in their families for centuries. They value these living assets not just as an economic resource, but as a precious commodity to be protected and nurtured for the generations to come. “Our members and the three thousand workers at Södra are genuinely committed to sustainability,” says Cristian Brolin, Chief Digital Officer at Södra. “It’s what we believe in, not something we do for a yearly audit.” That deep commitment to sustainability requires fast, easy access to a rich and dynamic data store.

The organization had maintained meticulous sustainability spreadsheets dating back 20 years or more, but pulling answers to queries required significant manual effort. Needing an AI-powered solution to realize its sustainability goals, Södra adopted Microsoft Sustainability Manager, a capability within Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability.

Making every part of the tree count

Sustainability at Södra is a multidimensional matter. It propels sustainability for its customers forward with what it calls “the substitution effect,” a wide range of lower climate impact alternatives to emissions-intensive materials: concrete, steel, fossil fuels, and plastic. Bio-based trays that replace higher climate impact plastic food packaging are an example of the substitution effect. In 2023, Södra’s products had a potential of displacing 8.8 million tons of CO₂. “We use every part of the tree to create sustainable products,” explains Eva Gustafsson, Sustainability Strategist at Södra. “Södra is the first entity in the world to institute a plant for commercial biomethanol, which is made from the same raw wood material as our paper and textile pulp.”

The forest association’s innovative use of wood pulp takes a fashion-forward turn with its OnceMore® fabric recycling process, which blends discarded cotton fabric with wood cellulose to create high-quality raw material for viscose and lyocell textiles for the fashion industry. That innovation is typical of Södra’s drive to respond to changes in customer need in a changing world.

The association rigorously tracks the positive climate effect it creates with a net carbon storage provided by the forests themselves and the substitution effect by Södra’s products, weighing the combined advantage against its emissions. Södra estimates that its positive climate impact is equal to about one-fifth of Sweden’s reported carbon dioxide emissions, so understanding its sustainability performance is of paramount importance. Until its adoption of Sustainability Manager in 2023, that was a labor-intensive undertaking that kept Gustafsson and her team busy answering routine sustainability inquiries. She envisioned a better way to answer them.

Seeing the forest and the trees

Gustafsson describes a complex matrix of sustainability that her team must collect and analyze. In keeping with Södra’s growing emphasis on sustainability, the team receives detailed questions about its climate impact, like how purchasing a given chemical or the various options for transporting goods affect the organization’s emissions levels. Such a focused question could take several hours of one analyst’s time to answer, and collecting data from myriad sources ate a large proportion of the sustainability team’s time.

The answer came in the form of Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability, which Södra deployed as a private preview. Södra’s extensive Microsoft solution expertise perfectly intersected with Microsoft’s introduction of Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability. “We felt that IT needs to be a part of answering the sustainability question,” says Brolin. “We trust Microsoft solutions, so we decided to work with Microsoft to automate sustainability reporting with Sustainability Manager much faster than ever before.”

As a Business Architect at Södra, Anders Jörnehag unites nontechnical departments like Gustafsson’s Sustainability team with IT. “Sustainability isn’t constrained by organizational or system boundaries,” he insists. “That’s why we embarked on this project. We’re helping our internal teams use Sustainability Manager to collect and analyze companywide sustainability data faster for more timely reporting.” Adds Brolin, “Data is key to helping us understand how much of a tree should go to timber and how much to pulp and other products. We use modern AI tools to understand how to maximize the value of every tree.”

Powering sustainability with deeper insights

For Gustafsson, the partnership with IT represented a huge step forward for her sustainability wish list. “I’ve never thought of myself as being very technical,” she admits. “I’m usually among the last to update to new devices. But this has been such an interesting way to collaborate because our project transcends both IT and sustainability. Neither team could do this alone.” Gustafsson appreciates the advances her team has made in sharpening sustainability reporting at Södra, from discovering previously unknown data flows to errors in the sustainability spreadsheets that hadn’t been obvious before. “Until now, we haven’t had a way of knowing when to ask about new data flows or other changes another department might make to their sustainability data,” she muses. “With Sustainability Manager, we have the visibility we need to help the rest of the organization manage its impact. We also have granularity and speed of analysis that has never been possible before.” Jörnehag agrees, citing the inclusion of data from Microsoft Sustainability Manager in this year’s annual report. “Together with our subject matter experts, we are using Sustainability Manager to unlock sustainability insights from multiple systems,” he says.

That cross-system capability makes it possible for Gustafsson’s team to help the organization optimize fuel consumption while identifying ways to lower emissions. It automated a data flow to show how much fuel each vehicle type was using to identify emissions “hot spots” and pinpoint where electric vehicles could be added to a specific fleet. But that precisely directed analysis isn’t key only to providing the answers Södra needs for quick climate action. “Sharing data with everyone at Södra, including our other stakeholders, regulators, and external sustainability researchers, is critical to moving sustainability ahead,” adds Gustafsson.

Brolin is pleased that his goal of IT playing a key role in sustainability is unfolding. “IT is not just a cost center; we’re a catalyst that brings Södra together to realize our financial and sustainability goals,” he says. “Both Södra and Microsoft want to scale our respective expertise and innovate for a more sustainable world. We’re proud to be accelerating that journey with Microsoft Sustainability Manager.” He considers the generations yet to come. “Everyone has a role to play in improving sustainability, and I want to play mine.”

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