If there’s one thing I’ve learned through years of working in technology, cloud infrastructure, consulting, and recently through my own MBA research project, it’s that sustainability isn’t just a trendy buzzword anymore. It’s become a core part of what clients expect from partners. More than ever, companies want to know not just about the technology we deliver, but how we’re reducing environmental impact while helping them grow. And as AI rapidly accelerates demand on global data centers, balancing this promise with our sustainability practices is critical.

Facing the Reality

The ambitious global mandate to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, as championed by the United Nations and its Net Zero Coalition, sets a clear direction: to limit global warming to 1.5°C, every sector must aggressively cut emissions, using cleaner energy and transformative technologies.

A significant hurdle in achieving these targets come from the surge in AI and data center usage that are driving a massive consumption in electricity. The IEA projects almost a doubling of the annual energy demands to nearly 950 terawatt-hours by 2030, roughly equivalent to Japan’s entire electricity use today.

Locally, according the CSO, in Ireland the percentage of total metered electricity consumption used by data centres rose from 5% in 2015 to 21% in 2023, which is a staggering increase. These increases is predominantly fueled by AI workloads that require intense computation and cooling resources.

Meeting net zero means dramatically reducing carbon emissions from all electricity consumption, including the rapidly growing data center sector. The challenge is especially complex because this goal is on a collision course with the evolution of how we work and how we live unless technologies and policies evolve urgently.

For water use, the story is just as urgent, data centers use millions of liters of water annually for cooling, often located in regions already stressed by drought and scarcity. Although for water, it’s not as easy to offset your carbon as water issues are local rather than global.

Acknowledging these challenges means ensuring that our technology solutions are built with sustainability at their core, not as an afterthought.

Approaching These Challenges Responsibly

AI is hugely exciting. It unlocks potential to do more with data, automate complex tasks, and help solve problems. But it also demands more computing power, and thus more energy and water. This is a responsibility we have to take seriously.

It’s clear to me that success depends on collaboration and innovation. We can’t tackle these issues in isolation, whether it’s technology vendors, clients, policymakers, or researchers. We must work have together to share transparency around resource consumption, invest in new efficient cooling and power management technologies, and adopt renewable energy at scale.

At Digitalis, we’re starting to embed sustainability into every technical decision, from architecture to automation, so that our cloud migrations, development and deployments, and infrastructure are done with environmental impact top of mind. This mindset is essential if we want technology to remain a force for good. We’ve always embedded security by design into our approach so it’s not been difficult to include sustainability by design to how we work, it’s not a big overhead, the change is essentially a mindset change.

That means designing solutions not just for performance, security, resilience, scalability but also for energy efficiency and minimal resource use. Leveraging AI to optimize infrastructure itself creates a virtuous cycle where innovation drives sustainability, not trade-offs.

Looking through a financial lens, this approach also exemplifies dual materiality, delivering both environmental benefits and significant cost savings, thereby aligning sustainability with strong financial performance.

Looking Forward

For me personally, and for Digitalis | Cloud‑Native Data Engineering & AI Experts  as a company, sustainability is no longer an optional extra. It’s a fundamental part of how we create value and build trust. Our clients want partners who not only deliver cutting-edge technology but do so in a way that respects the planetary boundaries we all share.

If you’re interested in exploring how Digitalis | Cloud‑Native Data Engineering & AI Experts  can help your organization combine AI innovation with robust sustainability, let’s start a conversation.

Let’s build a future that’s both smart and green.

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