c-suite

The fourth dimension of sustainability: Why software strategy is now a climate decision

insight
July 02, 2025
9 min read

Author

Thomas Steirer

 

Thomas Steirer is Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Nagarro. His focus is on developing scalable and sustainable solutions that are primarily designed to deliver valuable information.

For decades, digital leaders have triaged trade-offs between cost, quality, and speed. These dimensions shaped our methods, our priorities, and even our benchmarks for what “good” looked like. But today, a fourth dimension has emerged, one that reframes the very foundation of software development: sustainability.

Designing for sustainability isn't a nice-to-have or a compliance checkbox; it's a defining lens through which we must evaluate the entire digital value chain, from the boardroom to the backlog, from system architecture to end-user experience. And if we want to get it right, it can't start with infrastructure optimization or be an afterthought. It has to start with strategy.

Designing for sustainability: elevating it from trade-off to core design principle

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A sustainable approach to digital engineering is about making an intentional use of the resources, which begins with a strategy of making sustainability a part of the fundamental design condition or innovation, instead of viewing it as an additional element.

What we need is eco-digital engineering: an integrated mindset that makes sustainability a top priority when planning, building, and operating digital systems. This leads to energy efficiency while improving human and planetary outcomes.

Is designing for sustainability the same as reducing energy usage?

Not, reducing energy is one outcome. Designing for sustainability means intentionally shaping software to consume fewer resources, last longer, and deliver value with less waste. It's about changing what we build, how we build, and why we build it.

The strategic roles of “In IT” and “By IT” in driving sustainability

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Sustainability in IT speaks to the environmental footprint of our digital infrastructure. It concerns how we host, deploy, and execute code: cloud emissions, power-hungry workloads, always-on compute, bloated architectures. It forces us to consider cleaner choices of serverless models, right-sized provisioning, lightweight frameworks, and hardware-aware design.

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Sustainability by IT, on the other hand, is an impact beyond our systems. This is where digital becomes an accelerant of sustainability across industries. AI models that reduce food waste in supply chains, predictive analytics that minimize energy consumption in buildings, or mobile experiences that streamline public transit usage all these are examples of tech creating a net-positive effect on global sustainability.

Often these aspects are considered in isolation, although in reality, they are closely intertwined. The sustainability profile in your IT stack has a direct impact on the effectiveness of what you enable through IT. Opting for a resource-efficient architecture not only reduces cloud bills but also improves the sustainability of downstream applications in logistics, healthcare, energy and more.

Sustainability in IT reduces your digital footprint. Sustainability by IT amplifies your impact. When aligned, they turn your tech stack into a powerful force for systemic change.

The greenest code is the code you choose not to build.

One of the most powerful levers in sustainable software is restraint.

In an age where digital proliferation is effortless, where it’s easier to launch features than to question their necessity, the courage to pause becomes radical. In one of our AI-focused delivery programs, we scoped nine potential use cases. After a deliberate review, only three demonstrated real ROI and ecological value. The rest? They were clever, but not consequential.

This discipline of value-aware development challenges the "more is better" mindset. Every unnecessary feature excluded saves design cycles, compute hours, and eventual technical debt. It minimizes not only operational drag but environmental waste. Sustainable software demands that we ask: Should this be built at all? not just Can we build it? In this light, minimalism becomes a mark of engineering maturity.

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How do we balance innovation with restraint?

Ask the hard questions early: Is this feature valuable and necessary? If not, don’t build it. Innovation isn't about more, it’s about better. In sustainable development, omission is often the smarter move.

Designing for sustainability, instead of pure functionality

Performance, scalability and availability have long dominated the conversation about software design. However, as ecological considerations increase, we need to treat resource impact as a design constraint as real as latency or throughput.

What does this mean in practice?

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Prioritizing observed usage over theoretical peak load in capacity planning
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Selection of algorithms with low computational effort for high-frequency user flows
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Standard use of simpler architectures that require fewer moving parts and less orchestration
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Design APIs and data models that minimize redundant calls and storage
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This is where clean code takes on a new meaning. It's no longer just about readability and modularity — it's about ecological clarity. Clean code is now also lean code.
Sustainable design does not come at the expense of performance, but improves it. The result is a software that is not only more environmentally friendly, but also more stable, simpler and built to last.

Making the invisible visible: Measurement as a strategic lever

You can’t optimize what you don’t measure. And digital impact has long suffered from invisibility.

This is now beginning to change. By instrumenting systems so that energy consumption, data transfer intensity, unused computing cycles and emission equivalents become visible, we can incorporate consumption into decision-making. 

We have seen this clarity that has led to a real change. When developers can visualize “hot spots” in their workloads, not just by latency or cost, but also by carbon footprint, they start refactoring with new priorities in mind. When product owners weigh the value of features against resource intensity, roadmaps shift. When sustainability is measured, it becomes actionable. 

This also changes our definition of value. The question is no longer only: “How much will it cost?" but also: “What will it consume and is it worth it?” 

Green design principles

What if our team doesn’t have carbon data today?

Start with proxies: CPU time, data transfer, storage usage. Visibility doesn’t have to be perfect; it just needs to start. Later on, this measurement drives momentum.

Sector-specific momentum: Signals from the front lines

Some sectors are already moving quickly. In logistics, manufacturing and high-volume digital platforms, there is a direct correlation between sustainability and performance. In these industries, resource efficiency is often synonymous with cost savings, regulatory compliance, and brand trust.
In other industries such as finance, insurance and legal issues, a shift in thinking is taking place. ESG mandates and pressure from investors are forcing these sectors to look beyond Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions to the embedded impact of their digital assets. 
What unites all these industries is a growing realization: digital is not neutral. The way software is developed, operated and scaled has a real impact on the environment. And soon these impacts will be visible in audits, legislation and public scrutiny. 
GEO Insight – Europe: In the Nordics, energy-intensive sectors like manufacturing and logistics are linking digital optimization directly to Scope 3 emission reductions, using digital twins, predictive routing, and real-time data to improve sustainability ROI.

AI’s double-edged role in sustainable transformation

Few technologies offer as much potential for sustainability through IT as artificial intelligence. And yet, few technologies carry a higher risk of ecological costs in IT.

Large AI models, which are trained without restriction, can consume as much energy as several hundred households in a year. And that’s before inference, retraining and large-scale deployment. The irresponsible use of AI could become the very thing that undermines our sustainability goals.

So, how can we deal with it? With precision. 

We evaluate AI through a double lens: is it indispensable for the solution? And does it enable efficiency gains that exceed the costs of its use? In many cases, simple ML models or heuristics are sufficient. Where AI is required, we optimize architectures, utilize transfer learning, and select data carefully. 

Used wisely, AI can be a catalyst. But if it is used indiscriminately; it becomes another obstacle. 

Strategic Caution:

Every AI workload you deploy has a carbon shadow. Treat AI like you would treat your capital, use it where it multiplies impact, not where it simply adds noise.

Introducing sustainability debt: The new burden of scale

We are all familiar with technical debt - the cost of making hasty or short-sighted decisions. Sustainability debt is its ecological cousin.

It arises silently from excessive functionality, inefficient queries, redundant APIs, and oversized infrastructure. It remains hidden until costs skyrocket, regulations change, or systems fail ESG audits.

The best way to change this? Early intervention. Sustainability needs to be planned from the outset and not reviewed after the facts. As with security, this requires proactive architecture, not reactive patchwork.

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What’s the difference between technical and sustainability debt?

Technical debt slows down teams. Sustainability debt damages your ESG performance. Both are avoidable, both expensive if ignored.

Conscious engineering: A cultural imperative

Ultimately, sustainability is not just about processes but also about people.

It’s about creating a culture where engineers, designers and product leaders are empowered to ask deeper questions:

Why are we building this?
Is there an easier way?
What are the long-term implications of this design?

This is conscious engineering. A mindset that sees limitations not as boundaries but as creative catalysts.

We encourage it through mentoring, measurement, and shared practice. And we have found it to be one of the most powerful forces for innovation. When sustainability becomes a cultural reflex, it permeates everything from backlog maintenance to sprint demos to production releases.

Strategy first, then code. Always.

Sustainable software doesn’t start in the cloud console. It starts in the boardroom. It starts when leaders ask: 

  • What are we building? 
  • Who is it for? 
  • And can we afford to build it the old way for our company and our planet? 

We don’t need to slow down innovation. We need to redefine what progress means.

Because sustainability is not the enemy of speed or creativity. It is the limit at which both tests and further developed. We need to develop software that not only works well, but also feels right when it is used, executed, and maintained. Let’s write code that leaves less behind. Because in this fourth dimension, what we build is no longer just a technical artifact; it is a statement of values for the future.

Designing with Sustainability

Boardroom Cue:

If sustainability isn't in your software strategy, it's already missing from your business model. What you fund, scope, and build today will either reinforce your ESG goals — or quietly undermine them.

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