In global numbers, the report pointed out that 21% of organisations surveyed across the world use technology to reduce their environmental footprint and shape their overall sustainability strategy.
Technology, especially data and artificial intelligence (AI), has emerged as a powerful ally in this journey, accelerating progress and offering innovative solutions to complex environmental challenges.
She also points out that responsible AI holds immense potential for sustainability and can offer a holistic and proactive approach to environmental responsibility with robust scenario planning and risk mitigation opportunities.
“Despite its promise, only a fraction of organisations globally—and just 54% in India—fully utilise technology to achieve sustainability goals, underscoring a significant opportunity gap.
Currently, most organisations are leveraging AI and data analytics primarily for measurement and monitoring. These technologies track energy consumption and emissions, offering businesses real-time insights into their environmental footprint. For instance, AI is widely used to identify areas of high energy usage and flag suppliers with excessive carbon emissions. In India, 76% of organisations rely on AI to monitor energy use, while 60% use it to identify opportunities for reducing carbon footprints,” she says. She adds that while these efforts are crucial, they remain predominantly focused on reporting and compliance with limited application toward strategic foresight and transformative action.
Faith Taylor, Chief Citizenship and Sustainability Officer at Kyndryl says that the climate crisis and resource scarcity have become pressing realities for businesses, making sustainability an essential part of organisational strategies.
Taylor emphasises that businesses must utilise the full potential of technology and start exploring predictive and prescriptive applications such as AI forecasting of future energy consumption trends and management of their suppliers, products and services. These technologies can also support circular economy initiatives by predicting manufacturing defects, facilitating reuse, and minimizing waste.
The study showed that while 59% of Indian organisations say sustainability goals and initiatives are incorporated into existing reporting processes, only 12% fully use data for strategic planning and decision-making.
99% of Indian businesses use data to track or measure sustainability efforts to some degree, however 87% don’t use the data from their sustainability initiatives to guide the organisation’s transformation journey. 29% of the Indian businesses believe AI will significantly impact their achievement of sustainability goals. However, 51% of organisations do not consider the environmental impact when implementing AI solutions.
The study, therefore, suggests that technology must be core to strategic planning and the role of AI must be recast. 76% of Indian organisations use AI to monitor energy use and emissions, but only 28% use AI to predict future energy consumption based on current data. Integrating AI-powered scenario planning and climate risk mitigation allows organisations to adopt a holistic approach to environmental responsibility, enhancing readiness for future challenges.
Further, it suggests fostering a culture of collective responsibility. CEOs continue to shape sustainability goals and 55% of organisations consider Chief Sustainability Officers and sustainability teams as key stakeholders. The next step is for organisations to fully engage cross-functional teams, particularly finance and technology, to move sustainability into a core business priority and ensure implementation.
AI, and GenAI in particular, is considered being a game changer in technology with the power to reshape the world as we know it. However, Taylor says that AI also comes with severe energy consumption challenges in an era of climate change and eroding environmental sustainability.
“According to an IEEE Spectrum article, AI systems can consume up to 29.3 TWh of electricity annually–which is almost as much as the country of Ireland–raising critical concerns about their environmental impact,” she says.
Hence, Taylor believes organisations must use AI strategically and responsibly and actively address these challenges by measuring their energy consumption to establish a baseline, optimizing energy use through efficient hardware and algorithms, designing energy-efficient AI models to reduce computational load. Most importantly, businesses must use or transition to renewable energy sources to build and manage AI.
In another major challenge the Chief Sustainability Officer mentions is the lack of AI-ready data or the presence of excessive, unstructured data. About 57% of Indian organisations struggle to integrate data across multiple systems, making effective AI deployment more complex.
“Simultaneously, a lack of technical expertise, cited by 49% of organisations, exacerbates these issues. These factors collectively hinder the seamless implementation of AI for sustainability, emphasizing the need for strategic investments in skills, infrastructure, and data readiness,” she says.
The second edition of the Global Sustainability Barometer study was conducted among 1,355 global sustainability leaders spanning 20 countries and 9 industry groups. Conducted between August and September 2024, this study aims to bridge the sustainability-technology divide by examining the roles of strategy, data, and AI in achieving sustainability goals.
