Best of LinkedIn: Sustainability & Green ICT CW 10/ 11

The last two weeks show Sustainability & Green ICT becoming materially more operational. The discussion moved beyond ambition toward energy measurement, infrastructure redesign, cleaner power sourcing, and more explicit accountability for how AI and digital infrastructure are built, run, and scaled. At the same time, LinkedIn suggests that competitive advantage is shifting toward players who combine technical efficiency with credible delivery models, practical partnerships, and measurable sustainability outcomes.

Date

March 20, 2026

Sustainability & Green ICT

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!

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If you prefer listening, check out our podcast summarizing the most relevant insights from Sustainability & Green ICT CW 10/ 11:

AI and Data Centers

Water is moving to a binding constraint for AI and cloud growth, with direct site demand and large indirect water use via power generation becoming more visible
Mitigation is converging on reclaimed water, closed loop systems, and tighter monitoring across the full water lifecycle to protect local supply resilience
AI load projections are being revised upward, with visibility gaps creating planning risk for grids, permitting, and investment timing
Cooling architecture is shifting toward liquid readiness, including standardized server designs to reduce integration friction and accelerate adoption of direct to chip approaches
Waste heat reuse is gaining traction as a practical local decarbonization lever, including district heating concepts tied to large digital sites

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Green Software and GreenOps

Prompt and workload design is positioned as an immediate lever to reduce AI inference impact, with research claims that optimization can materially cut emissions without new hardware
GreenOps is being operationalized through training and certification, aiming to translate sustainability from reporting into day to day engineering and FinOps decisions
Tooling narratives stress real time transparency, exposing CO₂ and energy signals to influence usage behavior and prioritization in delivery teams
Focus is shifting from training only to inference at scale, reflecting the operational reality of enterprise adoption and recurring compute demand

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Carbon and ESG Data

Scope 2 debates are shifting toward hourly carbon accounting, arguing that annual averages hide actionable operational decisions like workload shifting and procurement timing
ESG data management gaps are highlighted as execution blockers, especially around supplier data collection and standard aligned evidence at scale
Carbon management software is positioned as moving beyond reporting, with emphasis on operational carbon intelligence and decision support for decarbonization programs

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Energy and Grids

Renewable ambitions are increasingly tied to procurement mechanics and contracted capacity, reflecting the need to match clean power claims with verifiable sourcing
Grid expansion and energy corridor projects are framed as competitiveness enablers, linking clean power availability to industrial growth and digital infrastructure scaling
Energy sovereignty narratives are resurfacing, positioning the transition as strategic autonomy plus resilience rather than climate policy alone

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Circular IT and Reuse

Remanufactured devices are framed as a cost and sustainability lever for enterprise procurement, challenging replacement by default refresh logic
Redistribution of surplus IT is linked to digital inclusion, combining waste reduction with social outcomes through large scale device reuse
Data center waste heat reuse is presented as a circular pathway that connects digital growth with measurable local benefits

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Ecosystem and Policy Signals

EU policy signals emphasize demand side market making for low carbon technologies, tying sustainability to competitiveness and industrial strategy
Sustainability is treated as a market access requirement, with credibility shifting toward proof, auditability, and execution capacity
Ecosystem activity is visible through cross stakeholder collaboration and professional recognition mechanisms that reinforce sustainability as an operating discipline

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