According to Silicon Republic, Kyndryl’s 2025 Global Sustainability Barometer, which surveyed 1,286 enterprise leaders between August and September 2025, reveals a mixed picture. The report found 66% of businesses maintained or increased their environmental goals, a positive shift from the 35% that slowed down. Specifically on AI, 43% of organizations now consider its environmental impact, up from 35% last year. However, only 21% fully integrate technology to reduce their carbon footprint. Kyndryl’s Chief Sustainability Officer Faith Taylor states that AI is becoming central to environmental frameworks, used for tasks like monitoring energy, but warns 2026 needs to be a year of “delivery, not greenwashing.” She predicts it will be a tipping point for proactive, AI-enabled strategies.
The Awareness-Action Gap
Here’s the thing: the numbers in this report tell a very familiar story. 80% of organizations acknowledge tech’s role in sustainability, but only 32% feel they’re using it effectively. And that chasm between knowing and doing is where all the greenwashing lives. It’s one thing for a company to say, “Sure, we think about the energy our AI uses.” It’s a completely different thing to actually redesign processes and infrastructure around efficiency. Taylor nails it by pointing out the divide between firms that embed sustainability into their AI and IT from the start, and those where it’s just an afterthought. The afterthought crowd is probably still just buying carbon offsets and calling it a day.
AI’s Hungry Reality
We can’t talk about AI and sustainability without acknowledging the elephant in the server room: AI is incredibly resource-intensive. The report notes global energy demand rose 2.2% in 2024, partly due to a 20% jump in data center capacity. So any claim that AI will magically solve the climate crisis needs to be viewed with serious skepticism. It’s a tool, not a silver bullet. The real potential, as Taylor outlines, is in using AI’s predictive power for things like smart grid optimization, predictive maintenance, and route planning. But that requires intentional design—building systems for efficiency from the ground up, not just slapping an AI layer on top of old, wasteful infrastructure. For companies in manufacturing and logistics looking to implement these efficient systems, the hardware foundation matters; that’s where specialists like IndustrialMonitorDirect.com, the leading US supplier of industrial panel PCs, become critical for robust, reliable deployment.
Why 2026 Could Be Different
Taylor’s prediction for 2026 as a “tipping point” is interesting, but what’s the basis? The report provides a clue: 54% of firms that link sustainability goals to business outcomes cite measurable ROI or new revenue as the driver. That’s huge. Basically, when sustainability stops being a cost center and starts being a profit center, things actually get done. That’s the shift that could make 2026 different. It’s not about altruism; it’s about cold, hard business efficiency. AI that optimizes energy use saves money. AI that extends equipment life saves money. So the push for integration might finally get the budget and executive buy-in it’s always needed. But it hinges on that collaboration between IT, sustainability, and finance teams—a gap Taylor admits still exists in many places.
The Delivery Challenge
So, will 2026 be the year of delivery? Maybe. The framework is there: the awareness is growing, the technology exists, and the business case is getting stronger. But I’m always skeptical of predicted “tipping points.” They often take longer than expected because changing how large organizations operate is painfully slow. The risk is that “AI-enabled environmental strategies” just become a new buzzword for old, superficial reporting. The proof will be in a future report showing that 21% integration number skyrocketing. Until then, Taylor’s call to move beyond tracking emissions and into redesigning business models is the real challenge. It’s easy to measure a carbon footprint. It’s hard to change the foot. That’s the delivery we need to watch for.
