NiCE balances AI growth with data centre sustainability
NiCE's 2024 ESG report shows what many Ops teams feel daily: efficiency gains are real, but AI demand keeps pushing the energy bill. The company cut combined Scope 1 and 2 carbon intensity by 11% year-on-year through office optimisation and infrastructure upgrades, yet total emissions still rose 1.8% to 6,581 tCO₂e.
CEO Scott Russell is clear about the trade-offs: progress across customers, employees, communities and the environment matters, but it has to scale with the business. The question is how fast the operational discipline can catch up to AI growth.
Data centre shift: lower intensity, higher absolute load
A core move in 2024 was migrating Israeli data centre operations to the cloud, with completion expected in 2025. That change coincided with Scope 3 data centre emissions rising to 783 tCO₂e, up from 408 tCO₂e in 2023.
NiCE tightened supplier requirements: its two primary data centre providers committed to sourcing 100% renewable energy. Contracting hinged on those commitments being in place.
Facility wins that compound
Office changes delivered practical gains. In Pune, two of five electrical units were moved onto renewable power, taking the site to 30% renewable energy and securing IGBC Platinum Certification. Across offices, hybrid work and space optimisation helped pull down intensity without stalling growth.
AI demand is the new capacity plan
In 2024, NiCE invested 14% of its US$2.735bn revenue into R&D, focusing on generative and agentic AI. Their platforms monitor 5+ billion financial transactions per day and manage 30+ million pieces of digital evidence-workloads that keep servers busy and meters spinning.
To blunt the curve, teams implemented energy-efficient coding, multi-tenant architecture and automated shutdowns of dev resources after hours. These practices align with the AWS Well-Architected sustainability pillar.
Governance and ratings
The ESG Steering Committee met four times in 2024 under CFO Beth Gaspich. In 2025, the Board expanded oversight by updating the Internal Audit Committee's charter and renaming it the Internal Audit and ESG Committee.
Ratings moved in the right direction: MSCI upgraded NiCE from AA to AAA and EcoVadis rose eight points to 60 (bronze medal). Water monitoring now covers 55% of office floor area (up from 37%), with total consumption at 16,639 m³.
Targets to track (2025-2027)
- +10% waste recycling rate at major sites
- +10% EV adoption in Pune and Israel
- +10% cloud spending relative to hardware spending
Completion of the Israel cloud migration in 2025 will be a key driver to watch-especially its effect on Scope 3 and the quality of supplier energy data.
What this means for Operations
AI loads won't slow down, so Ops has to design for carbon and cost at the same time. Here's a practical checklist you can put to work now:
- Run dual KPIs: track both emissions intensity and absolute emissions so efficiency gains don't hide total impact.
- Strengthen cloud contracts: require 100% renewable energy backed by credible certificates, hourly/real-time carbon data, facility-level PUE/WUE and water disclosures.
- Adopt GreenOps + FinOps: right-size compute, autoscale, use spot/preemptible where feasible, and shut down idle dev/test by default. Set carbon budgets alongside cost budgets.
- Choose lower-carbon regions and schedule batch jobs for cleaner hours. Use provider carbon tools to guide placement and timing.
- Design for efficient AI: prefer fine-tuning and retrieval over full retraining, use quantization/pruning, and set utilization targets before scaling clusters.
- Keep compounding office wins: on-site renewables where viable, EV programs for commuting fleets, stronger recycling streams and water metering expansion.
Leadership perspective
"Looking ahead, we will remain focused on making a measurable and lasting impact," says Scott Russell. He adds, "Through ethical business practices, inclusive growth, climate-related initiatives and innovation that put people first."
Bottom line for Ops leaders
NiCE shows the playbook: drive down intensity through engineering discipline and facilities work, while being honest about absolute growth from AI. Make sustainability a requirement in architecture reviews and supplier selection, and treat AI demand forecasting as a first-class input to capacity planning.
If you're upskilling teams on AI operations and automation, explore practical courses at Complete AI Training - Automation.
Your membership also unlocks:
