Sustainable technology is a framework of digital solutions that drive environmental, social and governance (ESG) outcomes. Here’s how to make the most of it.
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Embrace Sustainable Technology to Meet ESG Goals
Use sustainable technology to boost IT and enhance sustainability across the business
By 2027, 25% of CIO compensation will be tied to the impact of sustainable technology. But focusing solely on internal IT sustainability creates too narrow of a frame. Instead, consider how technology can drive broader sustainable outcomes. Download this research to learn:
How sustainable technology impacts your business goals
Which green technologies are driving sustainability in your industry
Strategies to balance well-established and cutting-edge technologies for enterprise sustainability
How sustainable tech will shape the future
See how sustainable technology transforms industries, accelerates growth and drives a better future.
Sustainable Tech 101
Sustainable Tech Trends
Innovative Sustainable Tech Opportunities
Use tech to drive ESG outcomes within IT, for the business and beyond.
The 2025 Gartner CEO and Senior Business Executive Survey found that environmental sustainability remains a top 10 CEO priority for 2025. And, by 2027, 25% of CIOs will have compensation linked to their sustainable technology impact.
The challenge IT leaders face, however, is that current technologies still have only an early-stage, open-telemetry capability for capturing the necessary performance and efficiency data — and for assessing IT’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions footprint. This reality is further complicated by the fact that powerful technologies, such as AI and blockchain, also have a large environmental footprint. Given this, sustainable IT is a balancing act between driving higher business performance and not adversely hindering sustainability goals.
It is in this challenging context that CIOs and their teams must be prepared for how the sustainability imperative will impact the future. And while technology is a necessary and powerful tool for delivering sustainability-related outcomes at scale, the future state requires IT leaders to harness sustainable technology to not only enable ESG outcomes, but also improve the sustainability of IT and enhance business sustainability — including compliance and product and service differentiation.
Build a sustainable technology framework to enable ESG outcomes.
Sustainable technology focuses on enhancing social, economic and environmental impacts. It involves making decisions about the use of technology and business practices that support long-term ecological balance and human rights. This means building a framework of green technology and digital solutions to enable ESG outcomes that includes:
Environmental technologies that prevent, mitigate and adapt to risks in the natural world
Social technologies that improve human rights outcomes, well-being and prosperity
Governance technologies that strengthen business conduct, oversight and capacity building
Why sustainable tech is trending
The use of digital technologies, such as AI and cloud computing, drives concern about their energy consumption and environmental impacts. Gartner predicts that by 2027, IT leaders will begin facing electricity shortages because the relentless increase in IT’s demand for electricity will outpace the production and supply of energy sources — both renewable and nonrenewable. This reality makes sustainable technology a critical, trending priority — and drives the need for even greater environmental performance.
The increasing demand for sustainable transparency requires greater monitoring and telemetry data collection with observability platforms, as well as digital employee experience (DEX) and data center infrastructure management (DCIM) tools. And it requires the use of enterprise resource planning (ERP) to track and maintain performance. Together, these visibility technologies add value beyond sustainability and provide necessary insights to improve overall IT performance.
Implications and recommendations
The critical need to balance IT energy consumption while achieving enterprise performance and ESG goals means that CIOs should use sustainable technology to:
Make IT more sustainable. Identify and remediate inefficient infrastructure, IT operations and software by managing the energy and carbon efficiency of IT infrastructure and workplace services. This means working with the right tools, hardware and vendors to deliver the maximum possible output, using the minimum viable resources to reduce IT greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. It also means focusing on critical subjects such as human rights, ethical sourcing and supply chain transparency.
Help the rest of your enterprise become more sustainable. Look beyond your IT organization to maximize positive ESG impact by reviewing the enterprise’s materiality strategy and prioritizing sustainable technology investments on the issues identified as most important to achieving long-term sustainable business performance. This includes helping individual employees use technology to adopt and scale sustainable practices themselves.
Help customers become more sustainable. Enable your customers to measure, track and improve their sustainability impact by using digital solutions to provide new products, services and capabilities. Here, the challenge is often that customers may want a sustainable product, but are unwilling to compromise on quality and cost. But by helping them embrace more sustainable methods, they can more clearly see how they contribute to their business goals — and join your organization in promoting the benefits of sustainability to wider audiences.
Use digital technology to achieve sustainability goals.
Digital technology can drive both financial and sustainability outcomes. For example, technologies like AI raise concerns about energy consumption and the relationship between technology and sustainability. But they can also scale positive sustainable outcomes if applied to the right use cases — such as autonomous recycling and emissions measurement.
Similarly, established technologies like ERP and cloud computing can improve sustainability efforts of IT, the enterprise and customers. For example, the Internet of Things (IoT) and data and analytics can optimize wind turbines to reduce costs and GHG emissions. And using digital technology to achieve social and governance goals can help attract and retain next-generation talent and customers. Here, organizations can outperform competitors by engaging with stakeholders through technology-enabled sustainable products and services.
Recommended actions
To move your organization forward to greater sustainability, take the following steps:
Contextualize the issues that your enterprise has identified as most important for long-term social and environmental performance by conducting a materiality assessment.
Review your current technology ecosystem to determine where investments in further digital solutions are needed.
Examine specific technologies that could help drive sustainability in your industry — and invest in those that are important for the business and key stakeholders, including:
Cloud services: The elasticity of cloud service models enables organizations to use only what they need — increasing utilization rates of shared resources and reducing environmental impacts.
AI: Using AI for sustainability can improve business operations and optimize processes to reduce the organization’s carbon and environmental footprint and mitigate material risks. Furthermore, AI can be made environmentally sustainable by using AI techniques that help create and run models at the lowest carbon footprint without compromising accuracy. This includes using AI to monitor, predict, mitigate and improve environmental issues in ways that offset the negative impacts of AI training.
Sustainability and ESG software: Use sustainability-related data discovery, collection, analysis, insight and reporting tools. For example, supplier sustainability applications can help assess supplier ESG performance. And life cycle analysis software enables the end-to-end assessment of environmental impacts of products, assets or services by reducing the complexities of collecting data and enabling organizations to assess trade-offs and make quicker strategic decisions.
Use the latest Hype Cycle for Environmental Sustainability. This will help you find the right balance between well-established and leading-edge technologies for your enterprise’s sustainability.
Establish a sustainability technology council with cross-functional leadership. Prioritize tech projects based on ability to meet sustainability KPIs, goals and payback periods. Evaluate the impact that each proposed project could have on sustainability goals, and allow good ideas to come from anywhere within and beyond the enterprise — including ecosystem partners.
Share relevant sustainability data by funding a self-service data platform and upskilling data literacy. Sustainability leaders need a range of data to track, plan, reduce risk, and deliver efficiency and growth. This means defining data sharing as a “business necessity” and treating data sharing as an essential capability for accelerating sustainability outcomes. It also means preparing the cultural environment for data sharing.
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Frequently asked questions on sustainable technology
What is meant by sustainable technology?
Sustainable technology is a framework of digital solutions that can be used to enable environmental, social and governance (ESG) outcomes. It consists of:
Environmental technologies that prevent, mitigate and adapt to risks in the natural world
Social technologies that improve human rights outcomes, well-being and prosperity
Governance technologies that strengthen business conduct, oversight and capacity building
What is an example of sustainability in technology?
An example of sustainability in technology is green hydrogen, which is a low-carbon energy technology.
Green hydrogen is produced from water by electrolysis, where the electricity required comes from emissions-free renewable sources or nuclear energy. It is attracting major policy support as a potentially significant zero-emissions fuel.
Why should technology be sustainable?
Sustainable technology is crucial for several reasons that span environmental, economic and social dimensions. These are:
Reduction of environmental impact
Preservation of biodiversity
Long-term cost savings
Resource efficiency
Improved quality of life
Equitable development
Future-proofing
Corporate responsibility
Drive stronger performance on your mission-critical priorities.