Best of LinkedIn: Green ICT & Sustainable AI CW 44/45 2026

Data center efficiency beyond PUE

• A PUE of 2.0 adds 1 kWh of overhead per kWh of IT, a PUE of 1.2 only 0.2 kWh
• A low PUE says nothing about renewable sourcing, water use or construction carbon
• Zero water designs often need a peak PUE of 1.3 to 1.5, against 1.1 to 1.2 for water intensive cooling
• A 1 GW hyperscale site can peak near 10 million gallons of water a day in a hot climate
• Local treatment and delivery capacity, not raw water supply, is usually the real constraint
• Adaptable cooling zones may hold value longer than designs tuned to one GPU generation
• Hitachi Vantara and Duraflow apply new cooling technology to cut energy and water use
• IGNIS and REBI explore recovering waste heat for nearby buildings and industry

New capacity and where it gets built

• Equinix SG6 opens in Singapore with US$290 million invested, up to 20 MW and a PUE target of 1.20
• SG6 runs at about 27°C, supports liquid cooling and carries around 1 MWp of solar
• Greece’s DAEDALUS supercomputer ranks 31st on the TOP500 and 23rd on the Green500
• Just over 30% of the €58.9 million DAEDALUS budget went to the data center itself
• Salalah in Oman plans up to 400 MW and a US$3 billion initial investment on solar, wind and storage
• Pantalassa tests wave powered subsea AI nodes cooled by seawater off the Washington coast
• Nepal’s 40 to 55 MW plan meets seasonal hydropower and AI build costs of $30 to 50 million per MW
• Kazakhstan’s Ekibastuz campus plans its first 50 MW for 2027 on a largely coal based supply

Regulation and public pressure

• The EU proposes annual public labels for facilities with 500 kW or more of IT power from August 2027
• The labels would grade PUE and WUE from A to G and show energy sources and heat reuse
• Spain may give data centers until 2031 to reach 80% hourly renewable matching
• The price is SRAP curtailment: sites on the transition are cut first and unpaid
• Portugal prepares stricter rules on renewable energy, water efficient cooling and environmental assessments
• The UK Data Centre Covenant ties faster grid access to environmental, social and economic requirements
• Google’s €13 billion Finland project reportedly cleared over 500 hectares of forest before assessments were done
• 39 of 40 data center ballot measures in the US midterms voted to restrict development

Measuring AI’s footprint

• UN University puts data center use at 448 TWh in 2025, heading towards 945 TWh by 2030
• 80 to 90% of AI’s energy goes on using it, not training it
• The IEA projects data center electricity rising from 485 TWh in 2025 to 950 TWh by 2030
• Organisations are urged to list their AI tools, ask suppliers for energy, carbon and water data and match model to task
• The Software Carbon Intensity Specification is now ISO/IEC 21031:2024
• CIOs are told to track total consumption as well as efficiency, since cheaper AI drives more use
• A benchmarking tool compares inference energy and emissions across major open and closed models
• Avilastar’s C3 framework maps SAP memory, CPU and storage emissions to system components

Efficiency tools and green software

• Neuralwatt reconfigures GPUs every 100 milliseconds to maximise output per watt
• Pricing AI by kilowatt hour instead of tokens cuts Neuralwatt’s energy per token by 70%
• The Green Software Foundation pilots an academy with 14 courses in five role tracks
• Simple prompt habits help: be specific, limit length, start a new chat per topic and skip images when text will do
• Code optimisation and hardware reuse are pitched as an alternative to brute force cloud capacity
• Trail Openers offers agentic software development on renewable powered compute in Finland
• code.talks debated how to keep agent written code maintainable and its resource use in check

AI, climate and capital

• AI could cut 3.2 to 5.4 billion tons of CO2 a year by 2035, yet large companies barely use it that way
• AI forecasting could put up to 20% more existing solar and wind onto the grid
• Only one reviewed grid operator had a meaningful AI program that was actually working
• The digital sector buys about 44% of all renewable energy produced
• A BIS paper from October 2026 weighs AI’s climate benefits against rebound effects
• The Jevons paradox warns that cheaper computing can raise total energy use
• GGGI panellists proposed a Green AI Alliance with developing countries in mind

Circular hardware

• R2v3 puts reuse before materials recovery for retired servers
• Decommission reports should count reuse by unit, not by weight
• Buyers should check that recipients are R2v3 certified and that every drive has sanitisation records
• Refreshed Tech buys back school laptops and Chromebooks, wipes them and returns them to use
• PUE and WUE do not capture embodied carbon or equipment stranded by early replacement

Events

• Green IO Paris runs 2 and 3 December at CNIT Forest, La Défense, with its first full French track
• The Green IO Paris programme lists 61 sessions and about 90 speakers from 15 countries
• The iMasons Climate Accord Summit runs 16 to 18 November with a session on Scope 3 partnerships
• DINAcon in Bern on 18 November hears the case for audited data center sustainability claims
• DCD Connect MENA in Dubai debated whether AI capacity is building “Greenwashed Gigawatts”
• The OCP Global Summit drew 15,000 attendees, with 800VDC power and liquid cooling in focus
• The next OCP EMEA Summit runs in Hamburg from 6 to 8 April 2027

Thanks to Bjorn-Soren Gigler, Myriam Jessier, Ann Rosecrance, Scott Hamilton, Jeff Bittner, Anna Lerner Nesbitt, Arwel Owen, Nicola Spadoni, David Obi, Tek Jung Mahat, PS Lee, Elamaran Police, Safaa Abdel Baki, Ir. Satrio Agung Wijonarko, Hemesh Nandwani, Abhijit Sunil, Edward Chinn, Lucy Hancock, Esther Whieldon, Charles K., Hon. Andrew Wheeler, Mónica Castellanos, Paul Fitch, Zak Moore, Shaolei Ren, Nelson Switzer, Alix Willemez, Malcolm Buckley, Yasser Al Barami, Martin H. Morrissette, Akinobu Shimada, Simon Wistow, Xiana Lamela, Jay Ruckelshaus, Fredi Claur Sabater, Irmak Sener, Mitch Black, Nicola C., Ina R., Paul Turner, Torsten Patt, Brian Burns, Nina Benoit, George Dritsanos, Ville Nordberg, Julie Schiller, Jay Monga, Denise Hannan, Autumn S., Antje Zehm, Ahmed E Unis, Nolwenn Godard, James Martin, Cal Innes, Julio C. Serrano, Medet Rakhimzhanov, Sanoat Dodoboeva, Antti Sipilä, Juliana Uribe Villegas, Wilco Burggraaf, Gaël DUEZ, Thorsten Jonas, Aydin Mir Mohammadi, Valeria Salis, Alyson Freeman, Tim Prosser, Cora Braga, Anita Schüttler, Kevin Leslie, Matthias Haymoz and Julie Chenadec and everyone else who contributed insights to this edition.