Welcome to the eleventh edition of the Jisc Digital Sustainability Newsletter. Each month, we explore the latest news, trends, articles, and insights at the intersection of technology and environmental sustainability.
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Digital Sustainability News:
Here’s a roundup of the top stories shaping digital sustainability right now. Click the headlines to read more.
AI Training Breakthrough Slashes Energy Use by 100x
Researchers at the Technical University of Munich have unveiled a neural network training technique that is up to 100 times faster and significantly reduces energy consumption. The method replaces energy-intensive iterative training with a probabilistic approach, targeting key points in datasets. It promises to ease the growing energy demands of AI, with accuracy comparable to current methods.
Dark Mode May Consume More Energy, BBC Study Finds
BBC R&D has found that using dark mode on apps and websites can actually increase energy consumption, contrary to popular belief. Their research reveals that 80% of users involved in the study significantly increased screen brightness in dark mode, offsetting potential energy savings.
Europe’s Digital Sustainability Market Set to Triple Global Growth Rate, Says ISG
The 2024 ISG Provider Lens Sustainability and ESG report for Europe forecasts the global market for digital ESG will grow from $21B to $34B by 2027, with Europe leading adoption. The report highlights how energy management, digital twins, and IoT are optimising resource-heavy industries, while engineering firms are entering the market, challenging traditional IT giants. Accenture, IBM, Infosys, and others top ISG’s rankings, but a skills gap in digital sustainability expertise may prompt more firms to insource ESG efforts.
Global Coalition Launches to Curb AI’s Environmental Impact
A new international coalition has brought together over 100 stakeholders – including 37 tech firms – to address AI’s growing environmental footprint. Announced at the AI Action Summit in Paris, the Coalition for Environmentally Sustainable AI will develop standardised metrics to measure AI’s environmental impact, promote sustainable practices, and encourage AI solutions for decarbonisation and biodiversity protection.
Ad Tech Firms Join Forces to Cut Carbon from Digital Advertising
Technology firm XR and Scope3 have announced a partnership to reduce carbon emissions from global digital and streaming TV advertising. Scope3’s carbon-tracking data will be integrated into XR’s platform, enabling brands to measure and lower their ads’ environmental impact. Digital advertising currently contributes around 2% of global emissions.
Ireland’s Data Centre Expansion Plan Raises Fossil Fuel Concerns
Ireland’s energy regulator has proposed new policies allowing data centres to expand without needing to use renewable energy, provided they build their own power generation or storage facilities on-site. Environmental campaigners are concerned this will lead to increased fossil fuel use, calling instead for a moratorium until renewable capacity meets growing energy demands.
Rising Emissions Could Halve Safe Satellite Capacity by 2100
New MIT research reveals that rising greenhouse gas emissions are cooling and contracting Earth’s upper atmosphere, significantly extending the lifetime of orbital debris. By 2100, these effects could cut the safe capacity of popular satellite orbits by over half, increasing collision risks and threatening long-term sustainability in space.
Engineering Report Urges Immediate Action on AI’s Soaring Energy Demand
A UK engineering report highlights the growing environmental impact of artificial intelligence. It urges immediate action, including stricter sustainability reporting, energy-efficient data centres, and government investment in green AI technologies. The UN Secretary-General echoed these concerns at the recent AI Action Summit, advocating for sustainable AI infrastructure globally.
Cryptocurrency Mining’s Growing Appetite for Renewable Energy Sparks Concerns
Cryptocurrency mining’s substantial energy demands are increasingly impacting global energy resources. This trend highlights the broader challenge of balancing the energy consumption of crypto mining with the availability of clean power for local communities.
Call for Increase in Renewable Energy as UK’s AI Ambitions Threatened by Soaring Energy Prices
Experts warn that rising electricity prices could stall the UK’s ambitious plans to become a global leader in AI. The government aims to attract billions of pounds of investment to create a major technology and innovation hub between Oxford and Cambridge, recently described as “Europe’s Silicon Valley.” But AI’s high energy needs have prompted calls for increased investment in renewable energy to ensure sustainable and affordable power for data centres and research facilities.
And finally…
Low-Cost Hive Sensors Could Prevent Mass Bee Colony Collapse
Researchers at the University of California have developed an inexpensive heat sensor system that alerts beekeepers when hive temperatures drop, a key indicator of colony stress or impending collapse. The Electronic Bee-Veterinarian uses real-time temperature data to give early warnings of issues like pesticide exposure, disease or food shortages, potentially saving colonies and reducing labour costs.
Digital Sustainability at Jisc:
Now for a quick roundup of digital sustainability initiatives we’re working on to support members across tertiary education.
Jisc to Sponsor Digital Futures Category at Green Gown Awards
Jisc is proud to support the Digital Futures Award at this year’s Green Gown Awards, recognising institutions leading the way in sustainable, innovative digital transformation. Whether it’s smart campuses, cutting-edge use of AI and AR, or sustainable IT infrastructure, this award highlights projects making a real impact on education, research and skills.
If your institution is embracing digital transformation and delivering positive change, why not put your work forward? Applications open 3 April and close 5 June.
Find out more and get involved: Green Gown Awards UK & Ireland
Exploring Digital Sustainability in the Curriculum
In his latest blog, Jisc’s Scott Hibberson shares early findings from interviews with members as part of our ongoing project, ‘Embedding digital sustainability into teaching and learning.’ The conversations reveal both challenges and good practice, highlighting how institutions are starting to integrate digital sustainability into curriculum design. Key themes include collaboration across departments, staff confidence, and linking sustainability to digital skills and employability.
Read Scott’s reflections and discover useful resources to help support your own digital sustainability efforts here.
Member Highlights:
In our monthly member highlights, we turn the green spotlight onto one of Jisc’s members in FE and HE who are implementing noteworthy digital sustainability initiatives.
This month, the spotlight is on Reloved Boutique – an un-conventional classroom offering real life learning experiences in a retail environment for learners in Barnsley College’s ‘Learning for Living and Work’ department. Through the boutique, learners with additional and complex needs get hands on with e-commerce, picking and sorting, displays, social media, impact reporting, photography, working on the tills, interacting with customers both in-store and online and much more. One of the core values of the boutique is sustainability, a common thread that weaves through the fabric of the store.
There are many elements of sustainability that the store covers, aside from the obvious benefit of reducing fast fashion going to landfill. The wider sustainable impact can be seen via the boutiques ‘ThingLink’ an interactive 360 walk around, which can also be used with a VR headset. Via the ThingLink, students and customers can click on icons around the virtual store and learn more about how the store is positively working towards the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
Sasha Beswick, Barnsley College’s Head of Sustainability commented: “Anyone can write a sustainability strategy and put in commitments, but unless the whole institution is on board then it can quickly fall apart. The Learning for Living and Work team have sustainability at the core of what they do, ensuring learners are prepared for a future in a low-carbon economy, but that they can also be aware of their part to play in the world. The Reloved Boutique goes beyond any initiatives I’ve seen before. The purpose of the store isn’t to save the planet, it’s an immersive classroom with sustainability in its heart. Those learners will enter the working world understanding what role they have to play in making it a better place and in my opinion that’s true sustainable education.”
Resource Corner :
Each month, we share a digital sustainability report, tool, or resource that we hope you might find useful.
Principles for Responsible AI Use in Climate & Digital Rights Campaigns
This month we would like to share a new paper by Laura Hilliger and Doug Belshaw for Friends of the Earth sets out seven key principles to guide environmental justice and digital rights campaigners in their responsible use of AI. It warns against Big Tech’s unchecked AI expansion, highlighting the significant environmental and social risks—like high energy demands, resource extraction, and systemic bias—while acknowledging AI’s potential to support climate goals if used ethically.
Key principles include:
- Prioritising sustainable, minimal AI use (“just enough” tech).
- Demanding transparency on data, algorithms, and energy usage.
- Holding tech companies and governments accountable.
- Ensuring diverse voices and community consent in AI development.
- Advocating for energy-efficient, low-impact models.
- Encouraging collaboration between communities and developers.
- Framing AI within broader justice, equity, and environmental goals.
The paper calls for systemic regulation, corporate accountability, and the centring of AI policy around sustainability and human rights – not profit.
Digital Sustainability Articles:
Here is a selection of our favourite articles on digital sustainability from the last month. Click on the title link to be redirected to the full article:
Does What You Scroll Burn Coal? BBC R&D Debunks Digital Energy Myths
Zak Datson and Mohit Arora challenge popular assumptions about web energy use. Testing key interventions – like dark mode, web performance tweaks, and reduced data transfer – they found that many sustainability guidelines for web design don’t hold up under scrutiny.
Their experiments revealed:
- Dark mode often increases energy use due to higher screen brightness.
- Fast-loading websites don’t necessarily consume less energy.
- Data size isn’t a reliable metric for gauging device power use.
Instead, the authors recommend simple, impactful user actions: lower screen brightness, use smaller devices, and extend device lifespans to curb embodied emissions.
Minor Adjustments in Data Centres Could Unlock Massive US Energy Capacity
A recent study highlighted by Tim De Chant in TechCrunch suggests that minor, brief reductions in data centre electricity usage could unlock 76 gigawatts of power capacity in the U.S. – more than the global power use of all data centres combined. Temporarily limiting data centre power draw to 90% during peak demand periods could significantly ease grid pressure as AI infrastructure rapidly expands. Strategies include shifting workloads geographically, rescheduling computing tasks, or using battery backups.
How Workiva is Transforming ESG Reporting Strategies
Writing in Sustainability Magazine, James Darley explores how ESG reporting is evolving in response to tightening regulations and investor pressure. The article focuses on the growing demand for integrated financial and sustainability reporting, driven by policies like the EU’s CSRD. Darley highlights challenges faced by firms in collecting and reporting ESG data.
Heat Networks Could Help Institutions Meet Net Zero Targets
Nick Helm and Adam Hulme, writing for Wonkhe explore how heat networks can help UK education institutions meet their net zero targets. These networks deliver heat from a central energy centre, increasingly powered by renewables or waste heat, to multiple buildings.
The Way Ahead: Getting IT Sustainability Initiatives Back on Track to Net Zero
In this Computer Weekly article, Caroline Donnelly discusses how many enterprises have scaled back their net-zero commitments over the past year. She explores whether these organisations might be overlooking the business benefits of adopting greener operations.
The Repairable Tech People Throw Out Is Amazing
Sarah Turnnidge, writing for BBC News, profiles Casey Sather and his Bristol-based repair business, FixMyTek. The business, founded by Sather during his time at the University of Bristol, employs graduates to repair hundreds of devices each month while hosting free repair cafes to fight e-waste. Sather advocates for empowering individuals to learn basic repair skills, highlighting how much fixable technology is unnecessarily discarded.
How to Choose the Right Cloud CPU for Your Workload
Writing for The New Stack, Charles Humble discusses the overlooked importance of CPU choice in cloud sustainability. Humble explains how moving to the cloud doesn’t automatically reduce emissions, with CPU efficiency, region, and provisioning strategy playing key roles. He argues that sustainability should be as fundamental as cost or security when optimising cloud workloads.
Balancing AI Growth with Environmental Responsibility
In Sustainability Magazine, Charlie King interviews Sunil Senan, Global Head of Data, Analytics and AI at Infosys, on how companies can reduce AI’s carbon footprint without sacrificing business goals. Senan emphasises strategies like model compression, efficient cloud usage, and integrating renewables.
Can Artificial Intelligence Get Past Its Power Problem?
Writing for Government Technology, Thad Rueter explores how AI’s soaring energy demands are putting pressure on utilities, governments, and tech firms to expand power grids. While microgrids and AI-driven efficiencies offer hope, concerns persist about whether energy infrastructure can keep up.
The Hidden Cost of Your Data: Why Digital Sustainability Is a Behaviour Problem, Not a Tech Problem
This thought provoking article from Alessandro Calzolari argues that the root cause of digital sustainability challenges lies in human behaviour rather than technology. Drawing on concepts like Construal Level Theory and systems thinking, Calzolari highlights how unseen data consumption fosters inefficient habits.
The Sustainability Gap for Computing: Quo Vadis?
In his article “The Sustainability Gap for Computing: Quo Vadis?” published in Communications of the ACM, Lieven Eeckhout examines the escalating environmental impact of computing. He underscores that, without significant reductions in per-device carbon emissions, the computing industry’s carbon footprint could exceed Paris Agreement targets by a factor of 5.4 within ten years.
Inside the Natural History Museum’s Partnership with AWS
Writing for Sustainability Magazine, James Darley reports on the Natural History Museum’s new collaboration with AWS to monitor biodiversity using real-time sensors and cloud-powered AI tools. AWS infrastructure is powering a central Data Ecosystem that consolidates decades of biodiversity data, while also accelerating environmental DNA analysis. The project, part of the museum’s Urban Nature Project, is positioned as a scalable model for conservation science globally.
What Does a Green Data Centre Look Like?
Guy Massey explores how the world’s leading tech firms are transforming data centres to reduce their environmental impact. Massey highlights how companies like Google, AWS, Microsoft, and Meta are pushing for energy-efficient designs, renewable energy integration, AI-powered cooling, and circular economy strategies. These innovations – ranging from liquid cooling and real-time carbon-free energy to server refurbishment programmes – are setting new benchmarks in sustainable data centre operations.
AI’s Growing Footprint: The Supply Chain Cost of Big Tech
In Supply Chain Digital, Libby Hargreaves highlights the hidden costs of AI’s explosive growth. Major tech firms face criticism for exacerbating water consumption, e-waste, and social inequities. While companies like Microsoft and AWS explore sustainable practices, community resistance and regulatory scrutiny are mounting as AI infrastructure strains ecosystems and public health systems.
AWS Sustainability Director Chris Walker Talks Green Cloud Innovations
In Capacity, Ben Wodecki interviews AWS sustainability director Chris Walker, outlining AWS’s ambitious green targets: net-zero carbon by 2040 and water-positivity by 2030. Walker details how AWS has invested in over 500 renewable projects globally and embraced nuclear power through Small Modular Reactors. He highlights AWS’s new energy-efficient data centre design, boasting a 46% reduction in cooling energy, and the successful Re:Cycle initiative, which has reused or recycled over 23 million components since 2023.
Revolutionising Operations: AI and Green Cloud’s Role in Sustainable Business
Suwarna K. lays out how AI and energy-efficient cloud computing are transforming industries towards sustainability. Organisations can cut carbon emissions and improve efficiency by integrating AI-driven energy management, predictive maintenance, and dynamic resource allocation.
Can Green Computing Tackle the Problem of Dark Data?
Dr. Erivelton Nepomuceno of Maynooth University highlights how unused digital data – ‘dark data’ – poses a significant hidden sustainability issue. Stored predominantly in the cloud, dark data consumes energy without providing value. Nepomuceno stresses that addressing dark data must be part of a broader shift toward sustainable digital practices, warning that renewable energy growth may not outpace the tech sector’s rising electricity demands.
To Push Green AI Forward, the Industry Must Start at the Source
in TechInformed, Urtė Karklienė, sustainability manager at Oxylabs, examines the environmental impact of AI and advocates for sustainable practices in AI development. Karklienė calls for a collective effort from governments, tech companies, and financial institutions to prioritise responsible AI development that balances innovation with environmental sustainability.
The Unsung Mechanics: How AI And Cloud Integration Drive The Engine Of Sustainability
In his recent Forbes Technology Council piece, Nilesh Suresh Jain examines how the integration of AI and cloud computing can enhance sustainability efforts across industries. Jain highlights that while AI and cloud computing are often energy-intensive, they also offer powerful tools to mitigate their own environmental impact. Key strategies include AI-driven workload management, intelligent cooling systems, federated learning to reduce data storage needs, and decentralised data centres to cut transmission costs.
Transforming Data Infrastructure to Promote Sustainability
In Data Centre Magazine, Charlie King speaks with Infosys’ Sunil Senan on practical strategies for aligning AI adoption with sustainability goals. Senan emphasises using computationally efficient models, edge computing, and renewable-powered data centres to reduce AI’s carbon footprint. He highlights techniques like model compression – pruning, quantisation, knowledge distillation – as crucial tools to cut energy consumption without compromising business objectives.
Podcast Pick:
This month’s podcast picks is an episode of the Sustainable UX podcast, where host Thorsten Jonas chats with Gerry McGovern, author of World Wide Waste, about the hidden environmental impact of digital waste and e-waste. From data centre energy use to short-lived devices, they explore how our digital habits contribute to climate change – and what we can do about it. Listen here.
Get Involved:
We want to hear from you! Share your comments, suggestions, and digital sustainability highlights. Contact our Subject Specialist for Digital Sustainability, Cal Innes, at cal.innes@jisc.ac.uk.
And don’t forget to subscribe to our DIGITAL-SUSTAINABILITY JiscMail mailing list for future editions of the Digital Sustainability Newsletter.
