---
id: "action-make-energy-visible"
type: "action-item"
source_timestamps: ["§ The Incumbent's Energy Playbook", "¶11"]
tags: ["visibility", "metrics", "dashboards"]
related: ["concept-intelligence-per-watt", "entity-salesforce", "entity-google", "entity-microsoft"]
speakers: ["Yinuo Tang", "Eric Yanfei Zhao"]
action: "Implement a quarterly dashboard tracking AI energy cost per workflow and intelligence per watt."
outcome: "Transforms energy from an invisible engineering variable into a strategic management metric."
sources: ["futures"]
sourceVaultSlug: "hbr-seg-futures"
originDay: 2
articleStem: "hbr-nm-101-energy-strategy-ai"
sourceUrl: "https://hbr.org/2026/06/your-company-needs-an-energy-strategy-for-ais-next-phase"
sourceTitle: "Your Company Needs an Energy Strategy for AI’s Next Phase"
---
# Create a quarterly AI-energy dashboard

## Action
Implement a quarterly dashboard tracking AI energy cost per workflow and [[concept-intelligence-per-watt]].

## Detail
Leaders should mandate a quarterly dashboard that tracks:
- Energy **cost per workflow**
- **Tokens/inferences per kilowatt-hour**
- The **ratio of latency-sensitive to shiftable workloads** (see [[concept-shiftable-vs-latency-sensitive]])
- **Cloud-region exposure** to constrained grids
- **Cooling/water assumptions**

Use tools like **Google Cloud Carbon Footprint** ([[entity-google-d2]]) or **Microsoft Azure Carbon Optimization** ([[entity-microsoft-d2]]) to surface hidden inefficiencies such as redundant queries or oversized models. [[entity-salesforce-d2]]'s Sustainable AI framework is the reference implementation.

## Outcome
Transforms energy from an invisible engineering variable into a strategic management metric — Step 1 of [[framework-incumbent-energy-playbook]].