In 2025, IT Sustainability Shifted From Aspiration to Mandate

Overview

• Hyperscale cloud providers advanced renewable energy coverage and piloted liquid cooling and workload placement to curb emissions growth from expanding compute.
• The W3C published a Web Sustainability Guidelines Draft Note, offering structured best practices for reducing the environmental footprint of web services.
• Scope 3 disclosure remains the biggest gap as enterprises still rely on industry-average estimates instead of vendor-level product carbon footprints that regulators can audit.
• Rapid generative AI adoption has created an unmanaged energy burden, prompting calls for Responsible AI governance with mandatory energy metrics and a focus on return on compute.
• Priorities for 2026 include mandating supplier PCF data through procurement, embedding green software engineering into the SDLC, and scaling MDaaS with stronger third-party verification.