Sustainable IT is often seen as a compliance or environmental objective. It has become one of the strongest drivers of modernization, helping organizations simplify technology landscapes, improve efficiency, and reduce waste.

Five years after we shared our net zero ambitions, sustainable IT has become a powerful driver of both environmental progress and technology transformation. Through greener technologies, cloud-based solutions, and other sustainable innovations, we have reduced our carbon footprint while strengthening the business for the future.

This approach has delivered measurable results, including a 45% reduction in IT-related carbon emissions compared with our 2021 baseline, significantly contributing to Capgemini’s net zero goals. This milestone is a result of years of focused execution, smart technology choices, and collaboration across our IT practices and other stakeholders.

Understanding our impact

To accelerate our impact, we collaborated with Capgemini Invent to conduct a lifecycle-based carbon footprint assessment. This assessment highlighted our biggest challenges: that most of our IT carbon footprint was created by an aging application portfolio, distributed on-premise data centers, and third-party contracts predominantly related to manufacturing. We also recognized issues arising from limited SaaS adoption, data center efficiency, and renewable energy usage. 

Transforming our technology estate

Through our transformation programs, we moved to an asset-light strategy by adopting cloud-first principles and consolidating a diverse portfolio of applications to just a few strategic platforms through decommissioning, which further reduced our carbon footprint.

We improved the efficiency of an already optimized on-premise data center footprint, by enhancing PUE and increasing renewable energy utilization. And we migrated our network from private MPLS connections to SD-WAN, making the internet our network and successfully making the network cloud native. 

Embedding sustainability by design

We took an informed decision to select and buy industrial grade laptops and removed stipulated retirement dates on these assets creating a longer productive lifecycle. 

We published The Green Book , involving deep collaboration with industry experts, which created a strong foundation for us to design and build leaner, greener, more energy‑efficient infrastructure. The book includes sustainable IT design principles and actionable guidelines that directly support our net zero roadmap.

This structured approach has delivered measurable results across major IT streams, including user equipment, applications, data centers, network and cloud.

Looking ahead

Looking ahead, our commitment to sustainability remains stronger than ever as we continue to contribute to Capgemini’s net zero ambitions.

Capgemini IT’s key focus areas include the smart and sustainable adoption of AI and Gen AI tools, including the responsible development of AI-based solutions and services for enterprise-wide use. Creating a capability to estimate the environmental impact of AI and Gen AI projects is an essential priority to ensure that sustainability-by-design is embedded right at the investment decision-making stage of any related project. Circularity continues to be another focus area, to build on the success of our global device refurbishment program. We will explore avenues to invest in greener IT equipment and services and expand their lifespan.

Together, we will continue to build on this momentum, strengthening the foundations of Sustainable IT while contributing to Capgemini’s net zero ambitions.