Sustainable IT by Design exists
Christine Heckmann
Co-founder, Verdikt
Céline Claparède
Director, CGI Business Consulting
The Sustainable IT by design exists.
Frameworks already exist. The Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) already applies to many companies. And in the field, dozens of organizations have demonstrated -project after project- that embedding Sustainable IT principles from the outset neither costs more nor takes more time.
Yet in 2026, IT projects are still being launched without digital sustainability even appearing on the agenda of the very first project meeting. This is no longer a question of awareness, methodology, or budget. It is a matter of governance.
It's time to say it.
We’re writing this opinion piece because we hear the same question far too often: Who should make the call? What we observe in our respective engagements is not a lack of expertise. It’s a lack of decision-making.
Sustainable IT by Design is not a methodology that still needs to be learned. Organizations that have yet to adopt it are not lacking the means to do so. They are choosing –consciously or not- not to put it on the agenda.
And the “skills gap” argument no longer holds. The frameworks exist. Expert guidance is available. The tools to measure, monitor, and improve digital sustainability already exist. What’s missing isn’t the know-how. It’s the decision to act.
What’s missing isn’t the know-how. It’s the decision to act.
No one is making the decision.
There is a remarkably effective mechanism for ensuring that nothing changes while everyone appears to care. It works like this:
- IT teams wait for direction from the CIO.
- The CIO waits for a mandate from executive leadership.
- Executive leadership waits for regulatory pressure.
- External providers wait for the client to make it a requirement.
- And sustainability teams measure and report—once the technical decisions have already been made.
Every stakeholder can legitimately claim they are waiting for someone else to move first. Sustainable IT by Design disrupts this mechanism. It requires decisions to be made upstream – before a CIO directive, before an executive mandate, before regulation forces the issue. And that’s uncomfortable, because there is no longer anyone else to point to.
This is no longer a nice-to-have. It is a prerequisite for selection.
Waiting for Sustainable IT to be imposed by regulation is not prudence. It’s avoidance. One signal makes this unmistakably clear: in RFPs for cloud, AI, and application modernization projects, Sustainable IT criteria now account for 15% to 25% of the evaluation score. This is no longer a nice-to-have. It is a prerequisite for selection. Organizations that wait for a formal mandate will not lead their digital transformation. They will be forced to follow it – often justified by an argument that no longer stands up to scrutiny: “It costs too much.”
It's not a cost. It's a debt.
he budget argument is the one most often used against Sustainable IT by Design. It is also the weakest. According to the French Agency for Ecological Transition (ADEME), 60% of a digital system’s environmental impact is determined during the design phase. Ignoring design means giving up, from the outset, 60% of your ability to reduce that impact.
And the cost of that decision is easy to identify:
- Architectural rework after deployment—far more expensive than integrating sustainability into the design from day one.
- Regulatory compliance projects that are imposed and rushed instead of anticipated and planned.
- Talent attrition, as the people who care most about these issues choose to leave organizations that are falling behind.
Sustainable IT by Design isn't an added cost. It's the cost of not embedding it that organizations should worry about.
Sustainable IT by Design isn’t an added cost. It’s the cost of not embedding it that organizations should worry about.
And that bill keeps growing with every generative AI deployment, compounding environmental, technical, and regulatory debt.
What leaders must do - Not operational teams.
It’s time to stop placing the responsibility for digital sustainability on operational teams alone. Awareness campaigns, charters, and training all have their place – but they are not enough.
Sustainable IT by Design is a leadership decision. It begins when an Executive Committee refuses to approve a project that doesn’t embed it. When a CIO makes it a mandatory milestone in every IT project. When a CFO recognizes that sustainability goes hand in hand with efficiency – and therefore with cost savings.
Organizations that publish exemplary sustainability reports while continuing to design digital systems without Sustainable IT by Design are not driving transformation. They are managing communications.
Organizations that publish exemplary sustainability reports while continuing to design digital systems without Sustainable IT by Design are not driving transformation. They are managing communications.
The trigger itself is remarkably simple. It will come the day a decision-maker asks the Sustainable IT question at the first project meeting – not the last. And once that step has been taken, organizations don’t go back. Because the results speak for themselves.
In five years’ time, Sustainable IT by Design will no longer be considered as a best practice. It will be viewed the way we now view cybersecurity that was ignored in the early 2000s: an obvious necessity that too many organizations failed to recognize.