“Those who walk away from net zero are betraying future generations,” said UK Energy Secretary Ed Miliband in July of this year. It’s a timely reminder that climate responsibility can’t be passed off to the next minister, the next budget cycle, or indeed, to governments alone.
In EMEA, the pressure is mounting from all sides. Data center capacity has already surpassed 24 gigawatts across key markets such as Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, Paris and Dublin, marking a 21% year-on-year increase, driven largely by AI and data-intensive workloads.
EU data center electricity consumption now accounts for between 55 and 80 terawatt-hours annually, representing over 2% of the bloc’s total electricity demand, according to the International Energy Agency. It also warns that data centre energy use could more than double by 2030, with AI workloads as a key driver.
Senior Vice President for EMEA at Nutanix.
Governments are beginning to respond. The EU’s updated Energy Efficiency Directive, which came into effect in 2023, now mandates large data centers to report energy use, water consumption, and renewable energy share. It’s a clear signal: businesses can no longer treat sustainability as an internal KPI or marketing narrative—it’s becoming a regulated performance benchmark.
Yet while 30% of large listed companies in Europe have made net-zero pledges, only around 5% are on track to meet them. The gap between ambition and execution is wide. Businesses that benefit from digital transformation must also be honest about its environmental cost, especially as AI turbocharges infrastructure demands.
That means moving past the net-zero platitudes and into the specifics, such as where workloads run, how power is used, and whether the tools exist to do better.
Business case
Infrastructure and energy choices don’t just affect the environment, they directly impact the bottom line and brand reputation. Integrating ESG strategies effectively, through energy efficiency, resource optimization, and process innovation, can achieve operating-profit gains.
There is also the financial and reputational benefit of authenticating any ESG strategy. EY’s 2024 Global Institutional Investor Survey found that 85% of institutional investors believe greenwashing is rising, and 92% say ESG efforts must be tied to near-term performance to gain credibility. That’s why 76% of them say ESG data needs independent assurance to build trust.
In EMEA, studies have confirmed that firms with stronger ESG credentials enjoy noticeably better profitability and market valuation, demonstrating that sustainability isn’t just an ethical choice, but a strategic one also.
In our own operations, and through the technology we deliver, we’re taking steps to ensure sustainability is not an afterthought, but a design principle. In FY24, for example, 73% of the energy used in our internal data centers came from renewable sources, up from 68% the year before.
This wasn’t achieved by chance. We transitioned workloads to providers with stronger energy and water efficiency practices as part of our datacenter lease planning, and continued to invest in energy attribute certificates to support our use of renewable sources.
But our responsibility doesn’t stop at internal operations. Our customers, spanning EMEA and beyond are under the same pressures, navigating regulatory change, rising energy costs, and AI infrastructure growth.
Customers who shared their experiences reported, on average, a 70% reduction in physical hardware footprint and a 50% cut in energy consumption when moving from traditional three-tier SAN-based architecture to NCI.
There is a lot to be learned from this.
Visibility and data also matter. Without insight into what infrastructure is doing and consuming, there’s little chance of real optimization. Our Power Monitor functionality, introduced in FY24, provides users with detailed metrics on power and energy usage at the node and cluster level. This allows IT teams to make informed decisions about workload placement and energy efficiency, rather than relying on assumptions.
We’ve also enabled smarter choices through flexibility. By supporting the reuse of certified existing server hardware and allowing incremental upgrades, our platform helps organizations extend hardware lifespans, avoid unnecessary “rip and replace” cycles, and align with circular economy goals.
Lessons learned
The lesson here is that the tools, data, and strategies already exist to make infrastructure smarter, more transparent, and more efficient. The challenge is cultural and operational: can businesses make sustainability part of their core IT strategy rather than a compliance exercise?
What’s clear is that meaningful progress demands more than policy alignment or new reporting frameworks. It requires businesses to take control of what they can influence directly – the systems they run, the energy they consume, the way their infrastructure scales. The lesson is simple but easily overlooked. Sustainability must be engineered into operations, not added on as an afterthought.
And while each organization’s starting point will differ, the direction of travel should be the same. Smarter, more transparent infrastructure backed by evidence, not claims, will define tomorrow’s market leaders. Not because regulation demands it, but because resilience, performance, and sustainability are now fundamentally intertwined.
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