Technology Magazine July 2025 | ROUNDTABLE PANELISTS

ROUNDTABLE PANELISTS

PETRINA STEELE

MARK YEELES

ELHANNAH ADEKEYE

GLOBAL LEAD EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES

GLOBAL CYBERSECURITY GRC MANAGER

VICE PRESIDENT, SECURE POWER DIVISION

EQUINIX ech & AI LIVE London brought together the industry ’ s brightest minds for discussions on key topics facing the industry right now — with sustainability being at the forefront . The Sustainable Technology Forum showcased how organisations can reduce their environmental impact while driving innovation by utilising sustainable technology .

DELOITTE

SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC

26 %

STAT PLEASE

Here , we share some of the highlights from the session at Tech & AI LIVE London 2025 .

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GREEN TECHNOLOGY AND SUSTAINABILITY

Can you give us a trend that excites you and a trend that concerns you?

Mark Yeeles: “The things that excite me around sustainability are the journey that we all have capacity to go on, first of all. In particular, when I think about the technology that is available today that’s not being utilised, that really excites me because I see the opportunity that presents itself looking outwards. I also believe strongly that the evolution of AI is going to be critical to help us solve some of these challenges as well. While we’re also thinking about how we build for AI, I think it’s the use case that I’m really excited about. Schneider Electric is investing heavily into this space to help customers work out how to do this better, faster, and more effectively. “What concerns me is maybe our adoption and the pace at which we’re changing. I’ve seen it from a data centre perspective, a buildings perspective, in manufacturing and from our power and grid teams as well. Does it frustrate me? Not really. I just see opportunity and I think with the evolution of AI, our products and how they can help and solve some of these challenges, I think everything is set out in front of us.”

Elhannah Adekeye: “I agree with Mark in terms of the intersection between AI and climate technology – we’re seeing AI used in creating energy efficiency, we’re seeing it used to more accurately predict environmental risks. We’re also seeing it in material science.

“However, from a cybersecurity perspective, it is a scary place. The attack surface is growing. We’re also seeing that in a lot of sustainable technology, part of the components of the service are outsourced. So we need to also be looking at our thirdparty risk management. What does that look like? How are we vetting our vendors? We also need to look at understanding how human interactions and teams are working together. Are our sustainability teams working well with IT teams, or are they bypassing them because of sustainability goals and creating shadow IT risks as well?”

Petrina Steele: “The thing that really excites me is the creativity that is now coming about because of AI – looking at people that are looking at sustainability and have a futurefirst strategy. They look at what it is that we can do. Heat export strategy is one of the things that Equinix is looking at. With all of the AI and the compute that is now there and accelerating at a phenomenal rate, what can we do with all this heat that’s being produced? We looked into providing that heat back into local communities in some way. We used the excess heat to heat up the Olympic pools. The creativity side is one element that’s really exciting for me – the way people are thinking about how to be more sustainable, how to be more green.”

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