Balancing power and progress: Building sustainable AI infrastructure that lasts

AI is accelerating innovation—but it’s also accelerating energy demand. As enterprises scale AI infrastructure to support larger models, more compute, and faster data movement, power consumption is rising sharply. The Flexential State of AI Infrastructure Report reveals how sustainability is becoming a critical success factor—not just for ESG compliance, but for long-term capacity, cost control, and resilience.

10 / 15 / 2025

4 minute read

Colocation

Sustainability

In this final post in our AI Infrastructure series, we explore how organizations are managing the tension between performance and environmental responsibility—and what’s next for building AI infrastructure that scales sustainably.

AI's energy appetite is surging

AI workloads are among the most energy-intensive in the data center. Whether training foundation models or deploying inference at scale, they demand powerful GPUs, dense compute environments, and always-on availability.

The result? A significant uptick in energy usage:

63% of IT leaders say AI has significantly increased their organization’s energy footprint
46% report higher cooling requirements due to AI-driven heat output
38% are concerned about their ability to meet internal or regulatory sustainability goals

This energy demand isn’t just a sustainability issue—it’s a business risk, as power costs rise and access to reliable energy becomes more competitive.

Cooling innovation is becoming a strategic imperative

To support AI infrastructure without overheating facilities—or budgets—organizations are rethinking traditional cooling methods. The report shows strong momentum toward next-generation cooling technologies, particularly among high-density environments.

Key trends include:

36% of enterprises have implemented liquid cooling to handle rising rack densities
29% are exploring immersion cooling or other advanced systems
50% are reevaluating data center locations to reduce dependency on legacy HVAC and access renewable power

These innovations don’t just support sustainability goals—they also enable higher performance and longer hardware life.

Sustainability pressures are coming from every angle

What’s driving this shift? It’s not just internal. The report makes it clear:

Investors and boards are demanding progress on ESG benchmarks
Customers and partners increasingly consider sustainability in vendor selection
Regulators are watching, especially in energy-constrained and water-scarce regions

Sustainability is no longer optional—it’s a competitive differentiator.

Yet despite this urgency, only 28% of organizations currently measure the carbon impact of their AI workloads. That gap presents both a risk and an opportunity for those willing to lead.

Colocation and energy partnerships offer a path forward

Many organizations lack the in-house resources to optimize for power efficiency, renewable integration, and advanced cooling. That’s why enterprises are increasingly turning to strategic data center partners who can help align sustainability with performance.

Flexential, for example, delivers:

Geographically strategic data centers in cooler climates or renewable-energy-rich regions
Energy-efficient designs and power usage effectiveness (PUE) improvements
Expertise in high-density AI workloads and next-gen cooling

This partnership model allows enterprises to scale AI confidently—without sacrificing their sustainability roadmap.

Future AI infrastructure must be efficient by design

As AI grows in scale, its infrastructure must grow smarter. That means optimizing power, cooling, and location as strategic inputs—not afterthoughts. Enterprises that plan for sustainability today will unlock lower total cost of ownership, stronger brand reputation, and long-term resilience in a resource-constrained world.

Learn how leaders are building greener AI infrastructure

Explore how 350+ IT leaders are managing power, cooling, and sustainability at scale—including data on investment priorities, risk management, and energy innovation.
Download the State of AI Infrastructure Report

Explore the full blog series on the State of AI Infrastructure!

This post is part of our multi-part blog series unpacking the key findings from the Flexential State of AI Infrastructure Report. Each post tackles a core pillar of enterprise AI readiness—from strategy and infrastructure to talent, security, and sustainability.