Digital sustainability is entering a more challenging—but also more concrete—phase. 

Against a backdrop of cost pressures, the rapid advancement of AI, and the politicization of ESG issues, environmental commitments are becoming more difficult to champion in the public debate. In the United States, the number of ESG shareholder resolutions fell sharply in 2026 due to political pressure from Republicans, according to Reuters. At the same time, energy demand linked to data centers and AI continues to rise: the International Energy Agency notes that the growth of data centers is creating new pressures on electricity supply, costs, energy security, and infrastructure planning. 

This context does not eliminate the enduring nature of the technological debate. It transforms it. 

For tech audiences, the questions raised focus less on broad ESG commitments and more on immediate challenges: how to reduce infrastructure energy consumption, cool heavily utilized data centers, accommodate the growth in AI workloads, and manage the costs associated with this digital transformation? 

This is one of the key findings from a survey conducted among attendees of Data Centre World, Cloud & AI Infrastructure, the Cloud & AI Leaders Summit, and Tech Show Paris. The responses show that sustainability remains an important topic, but that it is expected to be addressed on a more operational level: technical content, case studies, and practical solutions. 

Sustainability is becoming an architectural issue 

For this audience, sustainability resonates most strongly when it relates to the operational realities of digital technology. Infrastructure energy consumption tops the list of concerns, cited by 60.3% of respondents, followed by data center cooling, cited by 44.1%, and responsible AI, cited by 36.8%. 

The discussion shifts to the practical decisions that shape technological environments: where to run workloads, how to scale infrastructure, and what trade-offs to accept between performance, cost, availability, and energy consumption. 

In this context, sustainability also becomes an economic issue. As energy plays a greater role in infrastructure decisions, reducing energy consumption is not merely a matter of environmental commitment. It directly impacts cost control, operational resilience, and organizations’ ability to adapt their digital practices over the long term. 

Concrete evidence, not just messages 

The audience isn’t just looking for more talk about the importance of sustainability. It expects practical information that will help it take action. According to the survey, 51.5% of respondents want more technical content on energy, cooling, and infrastructure, while 50.0% want more real-world use cases and customer feedback. 

This changes the way the topic is approached. Relevant content should show how organizations go about it: the problem they encountered, the technical choices they made, the results they achieved, and the limitations they observed. 

This expectation comes at a time when sustainability needs to demonstrate its value more than ever. Gartner estimates that global data center electricity consumption is expected to increase by 26% by 2026, driven in particular by AI workloads, and recommends that organizations invest in more efficient cooling systems and architectures capable of mitigating energy constraints. 

Making Solutions More Visible 

The role of the exhibition is also clear. Companies involved in data centers, energy, and cooling are the category of exhibitors deemed most relevant by 57.4% of respondents. However, only 30.9% report having clearly identified solutions capable of improving the sustainability of their infrastructure, while 47.1% have identified them only partially. 

This disconnect shows that there is interest, but that the path from the problem to the content and solutions could be made clearer. A visitor looking to reduce the energy consumption of their infrastructure should be able to move more easily from a specific question to the conferences, demonstrations, exhibitors, and experts who can answer it. 

Sustainability should therefore not be treated solely as an editorial theme. It can become a user journey throughout the event: an identified problem, content to help understand it, solutions to address it, and experts to explore it further. 

Energy as a unifying theme 

Among the most anticipated topics, three priorities stand out: data center energy efficiency, cited by 63.2% of respondents; cooling and heat recovery, cited by 47.1%; and the environmental impact of AI, cited by 45.6%. 

These themes all point to the same reality: energy is becoming a defining factor in digital transformation. It ties together issues that are often addressed separately, such as power grid capacity, cloud architecture, infrastructure density, AI costs, sovereignty, supplier selection, and operating models. 

This is also what can help ensure that sustainability remains a business priority. When presented solely as a moral or regulatory obligation, sustainability can be more easily pushed aside when budgets are tight. When linked to reducing energy costs, optimizing infrastructure, and managing AI workloads, it becomes harder to set aside. 

An opportunity to bring together content, expertise, and solutions 

For Tech Show Paris, this presents a twofold opportunity: to address a clearly identified audience need and to leverage the breadth of its portfolio (data centers, cloud, infrastructure, AI, cybersecurity, and business strategy) to offer a 360° view of an issue that organizations can no longer address from a purely technical perspective. 

Sustainability thus becomes a starting point for a broader discussion on digital transformation. It compels companies to examine what their infrastructure consumes, what their architectures entail, what their AI applications require, and what their technology choices do or do not make possible. 

It can also become a more credible basis for decision-making in the current climate. Not because companies necessarily want to talk more about sustainability, but because they need to understand how their technology choices affect their costs, resilience, energy capacity, and future exposure. 

Moving from Claimed Sustainability to Proven Sustainability 

The survey suggests that audiences want to approach sustainability differently, through a conversation that is more grounded in concrete technological choices. 

At a time when ESG issues are more hotly debated and sometimes less prominent among stated priorities, this shift can present an opportunity. Sustainability isn’t going away—it’s shifting toward issues that are more measurable, more operational, and more directly linked to organizational performance. 

The next step in the debate will therefore not be merely to reiterate that sustainability matters. It will be to demonstrate how it is measured, how it is integrated into technical decisions, and how it produces verifiable results. 

In other words: moving from claimed sustainability to proven sustainability.