February 2026 marks a pivotal moment for IT and sustainability professionals. SustainableIT.org has released Version 2.0 of its Sustainable IT Standards Taxonomy — the most significant update since the framework launched in 2023.

Covering responsible AI governance, water sustainability, technology circularity, and supply chain accountability, V2.0 gives IT and sustainability leaders the granular, actionable metrics needed to measure, manage, and report on technology's environmental and social impact. Whether you're navigating CSRD compliance or building your sustainability roadmap, this update deserves your attention.

I recently joined the Green Fix Podcast to examine the escalating environmental impact of data centres amid the global AI boom.

The conversation explores the hidden energy and water demands of digital infrastructure, Australia's looming grid reliability gap, and the economic consequences of unchecked data centre growth. I challenged the adequacy of carbon offsetting, makes the case for 24/7 clean energy matching, and unpacks how data centres can evolve from passive power consumers into active grid assets — while confronting the growing freshwater crisis driving urgent innovation in cooling technology.

The 2025 Global Sustainability Barometer reveals a critical mandate for ANZ technology and sustainability leaders: transition from ambitious net-zero targets to tangible execution.

As the line between environmental responsibility and business performance vanishes, proving measurable ROI has become the primary catalyst for momentum. To succeed, organisations must transform IT into an enterprise-wide sustainability engine rather than operating in silos. Furthermore, leveraging advanced technologies like Predictive and Agentic AI is essential for moving from reactive reporting to autonomous, data-driven optimisation. However, leaders must first overcome significant data integration barriers to build unified platforms that drive real-time insights and competitive advantage.

Explores the environmental "elephant in the room" of the AI revolution: the immense resource consumption of physical data centres. Reflecting on a recent panel at Climate Action Week Sydney 2026, I contrast AI’s problem-solving "handprint" with its staggering ecological "footprint," noting that Sydney's data centres could consume 25% of the city's drinking water by 2030. To ensure sustainable digital transformation, the post outlines three critical imperatives: enacting strict policies requiring additional renewable energy, embracing circular economy practices for water and minerals, and implementing granular emissions tracking. Australia must act now to build sustainable digital infrastructure.

Explore the critical gap between corporate sustainability commitments and actionable delivery in Australia, drawing on World Benchmarking Alliance (WBA) research presented at Climate Action Week Sydney ‘26.

While corporate governance around sustainability is improving, actual financial resourcing and execution lag significantly. The escalating environmental footprint of the digital sector, driven by AI and data centres, poses severe climate and water stress risks. Furthermore, Australian companies frequently overlook Scope 3 emissions and crucial social dimensions, including Indigenous rights. To achieve true digital sustainability, tech leaders must transition from high-level disclosures to comprehensive, resourced, and socially equitable transition plans.

In this episode of the Green Fix Podcast, I return to discuss the maturing landscape of Digital Sustainability. Hosts Loreto Gutierrez and Dan Leverington explore the hidden environmental costs of enterprise technology, warnings against relying on unverified vendor carbon data. The discussion highlights staggering emission reporting variances within the financial sector and the urgent need to transition from spreadsheets to auditable, high-provenance data. Introducing the "Sustainability Value Triangle"—aligning Finance, IT, and Sustainability teams—to ensure accurate climate disclosures and mitigate greenwashing risks in an increasingly regulated market.

Practical, field-ready actions for tech professionals to shrink the ICT sector’s carbon footprint.

Framing Sustainable IT around Footprint (harm minimisation), Handprint (positive enablement), and Heartprint (societal well-being), it translates high-level sustainability into ten concrete steps: extend hardware life, code for energy efficiency, delete dark data, choose low-carbon cloud regions, adopt Green AI, optimize video conferencing, set aggressive power management, embrace circularity, leverage purchasing power, and champion sustainability within teams. It highlights governance implications, measurable impacts, and the role of individuals in driving systemic change toward a greener digital future.

Digital Sustainability is moving from peripheral ESG topics to core enterprise strategy. This blog summarises a webinar with Generate Zero on reducing technology-based emissions and unlocking business value. It highlights a historic blind spot: the digital realm, traditionally overlooked in sustainability audits. By reframing digital impacts as strategic opportunities, the discussion offers key takeaways and candid insights on integrating digital practices into broader decarbonisation efforts and value creation for the enterprise.

Technology Business Management (TBM) can help transform digital sustainability by turning IT from a black box into a granulated, accountable resource. In this post I outline how TBM links IT cost to business value and environmental impact, enabling precise hotspot identification, GreenOps accountability, and Scope 3 transparency. It highlights tracking AI workloads, hardware lifecycles, and consumption at the application level to drive targeted emissions reductions, justify sustainability investments, and align CIO, CFO, and CSO goals in the era of rigorous reporting (e.g., CSRD). The result is a shared language for governing digital sustainability across the enterprise.

Case study on applying UK Government Digital Sustainability Alliance (GDSA) Scope 3 insights to Australia’s tech sector. It emphasises that Scope 3 emissions—often 70–90% of digital carbon—require a practical “Operate and Improve” approach: baseline measurement, engaged procurement, and circular reuse.

Key levers include extending asset life (right-sizeing), sustainable procurement with product-level data and second-life hardware, and correcting myths that green energy alone eliminates carbon. The post translates these insights into Australian practice: align with federal targets, challenge global suppliers, and prioritize logistics to reduce Scope 3 more than Scope 2. A concrete three‑phase action plan and checklist guide practitioners toward tangible reductions in ICT emissions.

A 2026 global study presented at this years World Economic Forum in Davos reveals a pivotal shift in corporate sustainability: it has transitioned from a boardroom ambition to a technology execution challenge. Surveying 600 Chief Technology Officers, the research confirms that CTOs are now the "operational backbone" of the green agenda, moving beyond support roles to actively drive decarbonisation through code and infrastructure. While economic incentives currently prioritise energy efficiency and AI optimisation, significant barriers remain, including "digital debt," poor data quality, and a critical shortage of "Green Technologists" who bridge the gap between IT and environmental science. The future requires systemic, not just opportunistic, change.

Sustainable IT Playbook for Technology Leaders (Second Edition) reframes IT leadership around climate responsibility as a core strategic imperative. The book guides CIOs, CTOs, and senior IT leaders through a three-part framework—why, what, and how—bridging ethical rationale with actionable practice.

It emphasises measurable outcomes via an emissions baseline, governance structures, and practical KPIs, complemented by the Sustainable IT Reference Model and maturity dashboards. With updates on responsible AI governance, risk, and regulatory context, the work includes real-world case studies and downloadable templates from SustainableIT.org. While broad in scope, it offers a solid, implementable road map for translating sustainability into scalable IT transformation.

The 2026 Australian Cloud Reality Check assesses the carbon-intensity of regional cloud infrastructures amid the global shift toward Sustainability by Design. Despite a solar-led expansion, Australian cloud regions exhibit a driver of high emissions, routinely earning low E/F grades versus European leaders. A notable outlier is New Zealand’s `newzealandnorth` (Grade B), offering markedly lower carbon footprints (upto 90%) and meaningful latency compatibility for ANZ workloads. GreenOps-driven strategies: relocate non-latency-sensitive and batch workloads to lower-impact regions, optimise utilisation, and time-shift processing, while respecting data sovereignty. It emphasises proactive, architecture-level decisions to achieve Net Zero targets in 2026.

As we approach 2026, sustainability in technology enters a decisive new phase: moving from aspirational pledges and marketing language to measurable impact driven by data, accountability, and operational integration. Grounded in insights from leading IT sustainability think tanks and market analysts, this piece outlines the emergent landscape and the practical shifts IT leaders must embrace.

The 2025 Australian Climate Tech Industry Report signals that the sector has moved beyond early-stage innovation to focus on the essential "one to one hundred" scaling phase necessary for deep decarbonisation.

This momentum is supported by significant capital flow, with over $680 million in Venture Capital raised in 2025, and a growing workforce of more than 7,000 people.

For enterprise, the introduction of mandatory climate-related reporting for approximately 6,000 Australian companies is a primary driver, forcing a strategic shift towards evidence-based solutions. However, scaling capital-intensive deep tech requires overcoming the reliance on offtake agreements ("If you build it, we will buy it"), which are identified as the missing link for securing financing and commercialising innovations.

The World Economic Forum examines the environmental impact of Australia's digital sector and advocates for a "Nature Positive" transition by 2030. The tech industry's hidden costs include 1.5 trillion litres of annual water consumption globally, energy demands rivalling Japan's usage, and 60 billion kg of e-waste yearly. Addressing these impacts could unlock $800 billion globally by 2030. Key Australian priorities include designing for circularity, investing in e-waste infrastructure , implementing closed-loop water systems, and decarbonising building materials. Success requires coordinated action among tech companies, policymakers, and customers. The central argument: digital sustainability is both an environmental necessity and a strategic economic opportunity for Australia's tech sector.

Atlassian, a cloud-based enterprise software company, is navigating “digital sustainability” as it pursues a net-zero target by 2040 amid rapid growth in AI.

Key challenges, including heavy Scope 3 emissions tied to hyperscaler cloud providers, the rising energy and water footprint of AI, the complexity of tracking emissions from a distributed workforce, and tightening global sustainability regulations. Opportunities for climate leadership through using procurement power to push suppliers toward science-based targets, collaborating with partners to set and meet net-zero goals, and helping customers accelerate their own climate transitions. The case study emphasises transparent reporting, proactive risk management (i.e. work-from-home energy use and exploring VPPAs), and the central role of collaboration across companies and teams to decarbonise the broader digital ecosystem.

Mastercard’s push to decouple business growth from carbon emissions by embedding sustainability into IT operations. How the company tackled data- and culture-driven challenges, pursued cloud and asset optimisation, and implemented carbon-aware FinOps and governance across multi-cloud and on-prem assets.

Resulting in a tangible dividend: about 15% additional cost savings and roughly US$2 million in savings, alongside progress toward Net Zero by 2040, illustrating how making sustainability a core IT prerogative can drive both environmental and economic performance.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly emerging as one of the defining forces of the decade, standing alongside the urgent global challenge of climate change. With worldwide AI investment forecast to exceed US$600 billion by 2028, AI's massive appetite for computational power creates a significant environmental footprint that Australian IT leaders can no longer ignore.

The acceleration of AI workloads is straining resources globally and locally: Energy and Emissions, Water Consumption and E-Waste.

For Australian organisations, sustainable AI adoption is a critical strategic imperative. The goal is to pursue innovation through sustainability, ensuring that our digital evolution supports, rather than undermines, our climate commitments.

Amid the 2025–26 shift, digital sustainability hinges on energy-aware IT leadership. The Energy Shift ties surging data centre demand to AI-driven compute power, reclassifying energy as a core resource. Leaders must master New Business Infrastructure—understanding data centres’ role, energy-digital growth, and decarbonisation costs. Regulations push System-Level Accountability, provenance, and Scope 3 emissions reporting, demanding robust provenance and traceability. For Australia’s 1 million IT workers, the horizon blends AI-driven efficiency with workforce redesign, AI fluency, data literacy, and cyber resilience. The 2026 horizon urges proactive governance of energy, data sovereignty, and ethical, transparent, scalable compliance.