Key Highlights

• Sophie Graham, Chief Sustainability Officer at IFS, points out AI should be viewed today as an enabler of the energy transition, not yet as a sustainable technology in its own right.
• Early analysis from the IEA and LSE suggests AI’s potential decarbonization impact could substantially outweigh its own energy and water demands.
• Session moderated by: Amy Springsteel, Former Chief Sustainability Officer, Bloomberg.

The debate over AI and sustainability is one that is taking place in nearly every boardroom, and on every tradeshow stage: when will AI catch up with sustainability? Sophie Graham, Chief Sustainability Officer at IFS, says AI “is what we choose to make it” and views AI today as a sustainability and climate change enabler for the energy transition. Graham points to early analysis from the IEA and LSE suggesting AI’s potential decarbonization impact substantially outweighs its own energy and resource output.Here are three practical ways to proactively manage your AI and energy use:

• Check AI sustainability calculators. Many tools and open-source options are emerging to help organizations measure the energy, carbon, and water footprint of their AI usage — giving teams a starting point for informed decisions rather than guesswork.
• Use AI with purpose. Not every task needs a large model. Reaching for a search engine or a lighter-weight tool when that’s all a task requires — rather than defaulting to AI for every query — is itself a sustainability choice.
• Account for AI in your offset planning. As AI usage scales across an organization, offset and carbon-reduction strategies need to scale with it. Treating AI infrastructure as its own line item in emissions accounting, rather than folding it into general IT footprint, gives a clearer picture of what needs to be offset.

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The Bottom Line

AI is already proving itself as a sustainability tool — the efficiency and monitoring gains are real, and in many cases understated rather than overstated. Graham’s framing is the useful starting point: AI is what we choose to make it. The natural extension of that idea is this: the controls are how we choose to use it. The policy incentives, the infrastructure investment, the calculators, the purposeful use, the offset accounting — these are the levers that turn AI’s potential into an actual sustainability outcome.

About Sophie Graham and IFS

Sophie Graham is Chief Sustainability Officer at IFS, where she oversees delivery of the company’s sustainability strategy alongside its Executive Leadership Team, scaling the effort across IFS’s global operations. She has a background in environmental law and has worked across EMEA, the Americas, and the UK in the technology and finance sectors, including prior roles as Sustainability Strategy Manager at Santander and Responsible Business Lead at Fujitsu. Graham stepped into her current title in 2024, having led Sustainability and ESG at IFS since joining the company in 2021.

IFS, founded in 1983 and headquartered in Linköping, Sweden, is a global enterprise cloud software provider with roughly 6,000 employees and more than 6,500 customers. The company develops ERP, enterprise asset management, and field service management software for industries including aerospace and defense, energy and utilities, construction, and manufacturing.

Editor’s Note: The video footage was cut from ESG News’ interview archives, produced during Climate Week NYC 2025 at the ESG News live pop-up studio at The Nest Campus, with Moderator Amy Springsteel and Sophie Graham of IFS. Video features in this article are thought-leadership highlights from industry professionals; the views expressed do not necessarily represent the views of ESG News.