Gartner’s Technology Trends for 2025 – Energy-Efficient Computing: What Does It Mean?

In October 2024, Gartner released its review of the top ten technology trends for 2025. For the first time, the report included energy-efficient computing as a trend, ranking it sixth on the list.

Gartner defines the trend as encompassing more efficient architectures, code, and algorithms, hardware optimized for energy efficiency, and the use of renewable energy in IT systems. The benefits highlighted include improved IT operations’ sustainability through reduced carbon footprints while addressing commercial, societal, and regulatory pressures. The challenges include the complexity and expense of the transition, as well as rising green energy costs due to increased demand.

This blog series dives deeper into the topic, providing CTOs and CIOs with practical solutions for the transition and considerations for improving their organizations.

This is the first of five articles. The topics are:

• 1

  Foundations and reasons – this article

• 2

  Energy consumption of modern software

• 3

  AI-driven changes in energy consumption

• 4

  Recommendations for buyers, developers, and users

• 5

  Integrating sustainability into competitiveness

Rising Energy Consumption and Emissions in IT

Energy consumption in IT has grown significantly. For years, IT was somewhat “shielded” from scrutiny regarding energy consumption and emissions due to its carbon handprint effects—its ability to enhance efficiency and reduce overall emissions in other areas. However, as software development has become more complex and productivity demands have increased, the focus shifted primarily to improving developer efficiency.

In the past, when hardware was less powerful, software optimization was prioritized. Today, with hardware power far exceeding requirements, software is optimized only when absolutely necessary.

This phenomenon is known in academic circles as the cornucopian paradigm. It relies on two assumptions:

• 1

  Moore’s Law – hardware performance doubles every 18 months

• 2

  Unlimited capacity in the cloud

Neither assumption holds indefinitely.

The Growth of Software

Under this paradigm, software has grown significantly, driven by increased reliance on libraries and frameworks. These tools speed up development but lead to larger, less efficient applications.

A clear example is the continuous growth in web page sizes. According to the HTTP Archive’s annual Web Almanac (chapter 16), the average web page size in October 2024 was 2.6 MB, up by 0.21 MB (8.6%) from the previous year. Web page sizes have increased by 120% over the last decade for desktop views, and a staggering 357% for mobile views. Similar trends are seen in the number of requests browsers make.

While web content visible to users has not grown significantly, its complexity has increased, such as through the integration of more video content compared to a decade ago.

This trend extends to other software as well. As software size grows, so does the amount of computing required. Combined with ever-increasing data volumes, this results in more devices being produced and used, rapidly increasing emissions from both manufacturing and operation.

Energy Consumption in the IT Industry

Estimates of IT Industry’s share of global electricity consumption vary, ranging from 4% to 10%, even to 14%, depending on the source. The latest scientific assessment from 2021 estimated industry’s emissions at 2.1%–3.9% of global emissions. These figures are expected to grow rapidly, particularly with the broader adoption of AI.

To mitigate energy consumption and emissions, IT companies and the businesses that rely on them must radically change their approaches to software and hardware.

In the upcoming articles, we’ll explore these aspects in more detail.

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