Datacenters are the backbone of the digital world – and one of the fastest-growing energy consumers. By 2030, their electricity demand is expected to more than double, with emissions projected to reach 2.5 billion tons of CO₂.
While the industry talks about sustainability, it lacks hard data: isolated metrics like PUE dominate, and tech giants publish unverifiable claims – such as 0.003 g CO₂ per LLM prompt (excluding training, undefined prompt size, and based on market-based emissions), or that their cloud is 4.1 times more energy efficient than on-premises – without any explanation or evidence.
Yet operators who act can save real money: you’ll learn how one telco cut over CHF 5 million per year in energy costs, and how optimizing your IT fleet to eliminate just 40 underutilized servers can free up nearly CHF 290,000 in hardware, energy, and license costs.
This talk explores why these gains remain untapped – and how measurement and accountability can drive real progress.