Sustainable AI Governance
AI & Sustainable IT
Verdikt at the e5t Summer University Round Table
On September 2–3, 2026, at the 14th e5t summer university in La Rochelle, Hélène Levrault, co-founder and CPTO of Verdikt, spoke at the round table “AI & Sustainable Digital: Less Impact, More Value,” alongside representatives from ARCEP, Data4, Open Studio, Neotiq, Diplopixels, and La Rochelle University.
"Free" doesn't mean "no impact"
Insights from Hélène Levrault, VERDIKT
Drawing on Verdikt’s field experience, Hélène distinguished “legacy” AI — machine learning, image and text analysis, in production for years — from generative AI, which is newer and still mostly concentrated on productivity use cases. Notably, it’s legacy AI that is actually doing the heavy lifting when it comes to reducing environmental impact. She also pointed to mounting pressure from both directions: leadership teams wanting to factor AI into their decarbonization trajectory, and employees increasingly attentive to the footprint of their own usage.
She then walked through the framework Verdikt equips its clients with: building digital responsibility into project governance from the outset, on the same footing as cybersecurity or GDPR compliance, through five key questions — is there real value behind the need, what’s the right level of technology for the job, where should data be hosted given the local energy mix, how should usage be framed (e.g., capping requests per employee), and is impact measured continuously enough to decommission what no longer earns its keep.
A final warning: LLM providers’ business models, built to maximize adoption rather than profitability, make it nearly impossible to correlate what a company pays with the actual impact it generates.
Key takeaway: the value of any AI use case sits at the intersection of three factors — design choices, sovereignty & data location, and usage governance. This is the approach Verdikt helps companies put into practice every day.
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From IT to AI: How Covéa put numbers behind its sustainable digital journey?
Covéa measured its IT footprint in 16 weeks, then extended to AI in 6: 12 use cases judged on cost, emissions and value. A client story shared by Verdikt at Produrable 2026.