As demand for AI infrastructure accelerates, are data centres becoming fundamentally incompatible with corporate net-zero commitments, or can innovation keep their environmental impact under control?
“I don’t think AI infrastructure is inherently incompatible with net zero, but it is incompatible with the idea that efficiency gains alone will solve the problem. We need to look at absolute resource use, not simply whether each generation of hardware is more efficient than the last. If AI demand grows faster than grids can decarbonise, corporate targets will come under real pressure.
“The answer is a combination of cleaner power, better chips, smarter cooling, flexible workloads and, critically, more disciplined decisions about what we use AI for. Net zero cannot become an accounting exercise that sits separately from digital strategy. If AI is now core infrastructure, then its energy, carbon and water requirements must be designed into corporate sustainability plans from the outset.”
Should organisations assess the business value generated by an AI workload against its energy, carbon and water footprint before deciding whether to deploy it?
“Yes. We should stop treating every technically possible AI use case as automatically worth deploying. The relevant question is: what economic or social value does this workload create relative to the resources it consumes?
