In the face of escalating climate risks, intensifying energy demands, and growing regulatory scrutiny, digital infrastructure is becoming a frontline issue for enterprise leadership. What was once seen as a behind-the-scenes operational layer is now central to strategic planning, business continuity, and environmental performance. As companies expand their digital footprint—driven by AI, automation, and connectivity—they must simultaneously address a new reality: IT systems are only as strong as their ability to endure physical disruption, adapt to policy change, and minimize environmental impact. Resilience, once a technical concern, is now a boardroom priority.
At New York Energy Week 2025, George Dodd, Sustainability Services Business Development Lead – Americas at Kyndryl, poses a timely question to business leaders: as climate risks intensify, energy use rises, and digital operations expand, can today’s IT infrastructure continue to be a strength—or is it becoming a growing source of vulnerability?
Drawing from his years of experience across energy and financial services, Dodd makes a clear case: resilience to climate and energy disruptions must now be built into the core of IT strategy. It’s no longer enough for systems to function—they must endure, adapt, and contribute to broader sustainability goals.
Strained Systems, Higher Stakes
The systems powering today’s digital economy are facing mounting pressure. Demand from artificial intelligence, automation, and connected platforms is expected to increase global data center energy use by more than 160% by 2030. Dodd emphasizes that this pressure is most intense in areas where power infrastructure is already stretched and vulnerable to weather-related disruptions.
Efficiency improvements in servers once helped balance rising demand. That margin has disappeared. “We’ve outgrown our efficiency gains,” Dodd notes, “and we’re falling behind in building the energy capacity to keep up.” Combined with aging cooling technologies and regional water shortages, these forces are beginning to limit the reliability of enterprise IT.
Climate Risk Is an Operational Challenge
Many companies still treat climate change as an external issue. Dodd challenges this mindset. Higher temperatures increase cooling loads. Drought conditions make water-intensive cooling less viable. Flooding and sea-level rise threaten data center locations and underground fiber infrastructure.
The result isn’t just the risk of occasional outages. Over time, physical stress on IT infrastructure erodes performance and reliability—raising costs, increasing downtime, and weakening resilience. “The problem isn’t only about catastrophic events,” Dodd says. “It’s about the slow, compounding damage that chips away at operations.”
Getting Ahead of Regulation
Regulatory and policy shifts are beginning to target data-intensive operations. In Europe, large-scale facilities are already subject to energy performance disclosure rules. In the U.S., the landscape is changing, especially for sites that rely on fossil backup power.
Dodd urges executives to consider what’s coming—not just what’s currently required. Future policy changes affecting carbon pricing, tax incentives, or renewable energy procurement could significantly alter cost structures and compliance risk.
Five Principles for Resilient IT
Dodd lays out five foundational steps for organizations looking to align IT operations with climate and energy realities:
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Focus on energy efficiency: Optimize server use, retire idle systems, and tune workloads to avoid unnecessary energy use. When managing AI or high-performance computing, measure and reduce the energy cost of training and deployment.
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Use clean power and flexible systems: Integrate renewable energy on-site, install battery storage, and schedule workloads when and where energy supply is most stable and sustainable.
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Plan for disruption: Design data centers and IT operations to remain stable during climate events. Distributed systems, backup capabilities, and risk-aware planning help absorb shocks.
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Design with longevity in mind: Choose hardware and systems that can be reused or recycled. Find ways to repurpose excess heat, where feasible, to support other energy needs like district heating.
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Monitor in real time: Track performance, carbon impact, and energy usage across all environments—on-prem, hybrid, and cloud—to make informed decisions and stay ahead of both risk and regulation.
Tailoring Solutions Across Industries
These strategies apply across sectors, but how they are implemented varies. In finance and insurance, where computing demand is high and constant, optimization is critical. In retail and logistics, energy-conscious use of AI in forecasting and inventory can reduce strain. In healthcare and manufacturing, balancing data needs with physical energy constraints requires tight coordination between core systems and edge devices.
Turning Infrastructure Into an Advantage
An infrastructure strategy grounded in sustainability offers more than protection—it unlocks business value. Companies that embed energy and climate awareness into their digital backbone reduce operational risk, control costs, and strengthen trust with regulators and customers alike.
More importantly, they’re better positioned for growth in a world where environmental performance is becoming a key measure of corporate readiness and leadership.
The Leadership Imperative
Dodd’s message is ultimately about more than technology—it’s about decision-making at the top. Boards, CIOs, and CFOs need to ask themselves:
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Are we planning IT investments with future power constraints in mind?
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Do we understand our infrastructure’s role in achieving climate goals?
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Are we making infrastructure choices that improve reliability, not just efficiency?
In a world where the line between digital strategy and climate strategy is rapidly disappearing, strong leadership means asking the hard questions—and acting on them.
Why This Moment Matters
The intersection of digital transformation and climate responsibility is no longer a distant frontier—it’s the operating environment of today. As data centers become central to every sector and climate disruptions become more frequent, infrastructure decisions are no longer just technical. They’re existential. Organizations that align their IT strategy with the realities of energy and climate will not only manage risk more effectively—they will lead the market. Those that fail to act may find that their greatest vulnerability lies at the very foundation of their operations.
