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Apr 8, 2026
Earth Day gives people and organizations an opportunity to reflect on their values and goals for protecting our planet, and to benchmark their progress toward achieving those goals. Environmental sustainability is an integral part of Kyndryl’s core business strategy and plays an important role in supporting the success of our firm and the customers we serve. Managing climate risk, improving energy efficiency, supporting a culture of sustainability, and helping our partners and customers maintain regulatory compliance are all part of the job.
Kyndryl is committed to reaching net-zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions across the value chain by FY2040, obtaining 100% of purchased electricity from renewable sources by FY2030, and reducing water consumption in water-stressed areas by 30% by FY2030 (from a FY2023 base year). In recognition of progress toward those goals over the past year, Kyndryl received numerous sustainability accolades, including a “Top 5%” Gold Rating from EcoVadis, global ISO 14001 and ISO 50001 certifications and top sustainability ratings from Time, Forbes and ISG.
Here, Faith Taylor, Kyndryl’s Senior Vice President of Global Citizenship and Sustainability, explains how environmental sustainability issues influence everything from the digital supply chain and AI to data sovereignty and investor decision making.
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Sustainability is a broad issue. What are some of Kyndryl’s focus areas this year?
Faith Taylor: Sustainability is embedded in how we operate and how we serve our customers. This year, we continue to focus on three key areas: reducing the environmental footprint of our own operations as we work toward net zero; helping customers decarbonize and modernize their critical IT infrastructure through technology and data-driven insights; and advancing social impact through skilling, education, and community resilience. Underpinning all of this is strong governance and transparency to help ensure measurable, credible progress.
While everybody is thinking about AI in general, Kyndryl must dig deeper as a leading provider of mission-critical enterprise technology services. We operate at the core of critical IT infrastructure, so our approach to sustainability means using AI not just to talk about efficiency, but to actually deliver it.
A great example is our Kyndryl Sustainability Advisor, which uses AI to help customers optimize energy usage across their IT environments — identifying opportunities to reduce consumption, cut costs, and lower carbon output in real time. We're also doing meaningful work with clients in the insurance industry around Scope 3 emissions as we help them gain visibility into the emissions embedded across their value chains and vendor relationships. This is increasingly important as regulatory pressure and investor expectations around climate disclosure continue to grow. Sustainability isn’t a side initiative for Kyndryl. It’s embedded in how we design and deliver services. And AI is helping us and our customers make measurable progress.
As AI accelerates the demand for computing power, the digital supply chain has become a defining sustainability challenge to how we source and use power, procure and use energy-efficient hardware and software, and manage its impact on the environment. For AI growth to be sustainable, customers, providers, communities and investors must be able to see and understand the value proposition behind that growth.
What are some of the sustainability-related roadblocks to AI growth?
Taylor: Shortages of grid infrastructure and rising energy costs are causing delays in new AI data center construction projects. In addition, data sovereignty requirements are making data placement decisions more complex. Kyndryl’s new sovereignty services are designed to help organizations assess which workloads require sovereign control. Those decisions contribute to determining where data centers must be located, which then raises issues of how to source power sustainably.
As AI-driven infrastructure scales, sustainability outcomes are shaped not just by energy sourcing, but by the full digital supply chain — including infrastructure location, technology choices, procurement models, and supplier ecosystems. We can provide customized sustainability services, such as Kyndryl Sustainability Advisor, that help customers optimize their energy usage and manage their environmental footprint. But the next step in that process involves managing procurement to help ensure that our partners and suppliers share our commitment to sustainability and join us in pursuit of our goals. Those decisions, and the dynamics of those relationships, determine the extent to which we can reduce emissions and our GHG footprint at scale.
Does sustainability performance influence investor decisions?
Taylor: Absolutely! That’s one of the reasons that sustainability reporting is so important. Sustainability is not a “soft” area, and talking about it isn’t about throwing around feel-good metrics about distant dreams that may never come true. Investors don’t deal in “soft.” They’re looking for hard numbers about measurable progress toward managing situations that have profound implications for both industry and society. That’s also why just having “targets” isn’t enough. Organizations must show actions and accountability to build investor trust. For example, Kyndryl has reduced our total emissions by 18% compared to our fiscal 2023 baseline. We are making meaningful progress toward our science‑based target of net‑zero emissions by 2040.
Earth Day is an annual milestone that helps us reinforce our commitment to environmental stewardship. But pursuing sustainability is an everyday responsibility.
Learn more about Environmental Sustainability at Kyndryl.
