IDC's Worldwide Sustainable Strategies and Technologies Taxonomy, 2026

This IDC study presents the 2026 update of IDC's worldwide sustainable strategies and technologies taxonomy, the umbrella framework for IDC's research on sustainable IT and IT for sustainability. The 2026 update preserves the three-segment structure of the 2023 taxonomy (now named sustainable digital infrastructure, technology solutions for sustainability, and sustainable enterprise services) while threading AI through every segment as the dominant theme. AI has become the single largest variable shaping the sustainability footprint of digital infrastructure: Per Datacenter Facilities Index, 2H25 (IDC #US53927825, December 2025), datacenter electricity consumption is forecast to grow from ~404TWh in 2024 to ~1,069TWh in 2028 at a CAGR of 28%, with IT power capacity scaling from 270GW to 515GW and accelerated racks reaching 16.4% of all racks by 2028. AI has also become the operating layer for organizations using technology to deliver sustainability outcomes - agentic and generative AI for environmental, social, and governance (ESG) data and disclosure; climate risk; energy and grid; supply chain; manufacturing; the built environment; DEI and human rights due diligence; and greenwashing/claim verification. The taxonomy covers the full scope of environmental, social, and governance topics required by the major reporting frameworks, and a new segment 2 domain (social sustainability and workforce) consolidates DEI, human rights due diligence, workforce management, community impact, ethics, and customer privacy software. Each segment explicitly covers AI-led segments alongside the preserved general (non-AI) segments that remain material to enterprise sustainability programs, so that the umbrella continues to roll up the segmentation defined in IDC's specialized sustainability software and services taxonomies."AI is now the central force shaping both sides of the sustainability technology market - driving up datacenter power and water demand while simultaneously becoming the operating layer for how organizations manage emissions, climate risk, and ESG disclosure. The 2026 taxonomy reorganizes IDC's sustainability research around this reality while preserving continuity with our specialized software and services taxonomies, so that customers can navigate the full landscape from a single framework." - Bjoern Stengel, Global Sustainability Research and Practice lead, IDC