As the global pressure to meaningfully address systemic issues causing climate change mounts, the tech industry presents a complex duality.
While technological innovation is seen by many as our best hope at both mitigating the impact of manmade climate change and fighting to reverse it, the industry itself acts as a major strain on global resources.
As the 30th United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP30, takes place in Brazil and as new sustainability reporting standards come into force, software group Flexera has posed the question of what IT leaders feel about tech’s involvement in sustainability.
Intent vs execution
In its survey of UK IT leaders, Flexera found there was overwhelming agreement about the importance of sustainability, with 93% saying sustainability is a “growing business priority”.
While there is seemingly near universal agreement that sustainability is a priority, the survey also revealed that, for the most part, IT leaders do not feel their organisations are doing enough.
As many as 83% said that their organisations need to “do more for IT sustainability” despite their agreement that it is a priority.
“The gap often stems from execution challenges rather than intent,” said Marlon Oliver, senior vice president for the EMEA region at Flexera.
“While sustainability is widely acknowledged as critical, we’re seeing that organisations struggle with translating ambition into measurable action.”
There are a number of contributing factors to this, with Oliver citing legacy systems, cost pressures and a lack of standardised reporting” among them.
Sustainability and AI
Among the more recent contributing factors is the introduction of recent high-powered technologies that are having huge ripple effects on corporate strategies.
Not only has AI overtaken sustainability as a key priority among many firms according to Flexera’s research, but the technology itself is known for its intense environmental impact regarding energy, compute, water and land costs.
This is true to varying degrees of all cloud software, which has come to dominate much of the industry.
Rising cloud costs are also a challenge for businesses supporting sustainability, according to Flexera, with 68% saying it is stretching their budget, while almost half (48%) report being “overwhelmed” by usage and cost data that is “too fragmented to guide clear decisions”.
So AI and cloud technologies present a challenge on several fronts, the environmental costs of the technology itself, the financial and time strain on businesses that need to keep pace with innovation and the complexity of reporting an individual company’s climate impact based on its use of certain technologies.
Oliver claimed that while this is a serious issue, it does not mean the only option is deprioritising these technologies.
“Rather than deprioritising these technologies, the focus should be on leveraging them intelligently and using AI for predictive analytics to reduce waste and adopt cloud providers committed to renewable energy.
“Sustainability and innovation are not mutually exclusive; with the right strategy, they can reinforce each other.”
What can be done?
Given the complexities outlined, Oliver claimed that to make progress “IT leaders need clear regulatory frameworks and internal governance that prioritise sustainability as a core business objective”.
He said: “Policies should incentivise sustainable practices—such as energy-efficient infrastructure and responsible procurement—while organisations must embed sustainability KPIs into performance metrics.”
