Best of LinkedIn: Sustainability & Green ICT CW 16/ 17

A decisive shift from pledges to execution defined the last two weeks across Sustainability & Green ICT. Tech leaders doubled down on energy transparency for AI and cloud, early-stage alliances moved circular solutions closer to scale, and green-software tactics proved they can cut emissions and costs – without slowing innovation.

Date

April 16, 2025

Sustainability & Green ICT

Thomas Allgeyer

Methodology: Every two weeks we collect most relevant posts on LinkedIn for selected topics and create an overall summary only based on these posts. If you´re interested in the single posts behind, you can find them here: https://linktr.ee/thomasallgeyer. Have a great read!

‍

Listen to our podcast

AI Energy & Efficiency

First movers exposed hidden compute waste, showing that a single SQL rewrite or smarter GPU scheduling can erase tonnes of CO₂ while cutting cloud spend
Observability platforms pushed “energy as a KPI”, linking model-level telemetry to real-time grid carbon intensity for smarter workload placement
Vendors framed lightweight, on-device AI as the fast track to greener inference – privacy and latency gains now reinforced by lower Scope 2 emissions

‍

Green Software

GitHub’s Climate Action Plan translated abstract goals into a curated toolbox of 60k+ repos, from CodeCarbon to low-power algorithms – mainstreaming carbon-aware coding
Developer communities treated sustainability as a non-functional requirement, embedding power-profiling in CI pipelines alongside security tests

‍

Cloud & Data-Centre Optimisation

Operators flagged idle capacity as the next megatonne opportunity and trialled dynamic load-shifting to match renewable peaks
Proof-points from San Francisco Climate Week spotlighted air-flow retrofits and liquid cooling, moving efficiency from incremental to step-change

‍

Regulation & Standards

Emerging RFP language demanded verifiable energy metrics for AI services, forcing suppliers to publish model efficiency benchmarks
ESG reporting frameworks converged on “grams CO₂e per inference” as a comparability metric, signalling tougher disclosure ahead

‍

Partnerships & Investments

GitHub, Electricity Maps and climate AI startups aligned to deliver open, hourly emissions data directly into dev workflows
Corporate venture arms targeted battery re-processing, edge-AI efficiency and sustainable silicon, indicating where capital sees the next S-curve

‍

Circular Economy & E-Waste

Battery-recycling innovators demonstrated closed-loop processes that reclaim >90 % of critical minerals, lowering lifecycle emissions and price volatility exposure
IT refurbishers made the business case for “as-new” laptops: lower TCO, faster lead times, and a 70 % smaller carbon footprint versus new hardware

‍

Renewables & Energy Transition

Data-centre operators piloted co-location with on-site solar-plus-storage, shifting from offsets to physical decarbonisation
Grid-interactive facilities tested demand-response contracts, monetising flexibility while smoothing renewables intermittency

‍

Subscribe to newsletter

Subscribe to receive the latest blog posts to your inbox every week.