İDİL KANADOĞLU

Integrating Sustainability into AI and Data Compliance Frameworks: A Corporate Governance Perspective

Abstract

The rapid expansion of artificial intelligence (AI) systems across energy-intensive digital infrastructures has raised a fundamental question: what is the environmental cost of regulatory compliance itself? As organisations deploy AI-driven tools to meet obligations under the EU AI Act and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the computational resources required contribute significantly to carbon emissions. Despite the EU’s climate commitments under the European Green Deal, existing AI and data governance frameworks remain largely silent on the environmental implications of compliance-driven data processing.

This paper examines the structural gap between corporate AI compliance obligations and Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) reporting frameworks. While the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and the EU Taxonomy Regulation impose sustainability disclosure requirements on large undertakings, they do not account for the environmental footprint generated by AI compliance infrastructure. Organisations are thus placed in the paradoxical position of expanding their digital governance apparatus in response to regulatory demands, while being expected to reduce their environmental impact under a disconnected body of sustainability law.

This study analyses how AI governance and sustainability frameworks interact at the level of corporate governance, arguing that their incoherence creates both regulatory inefficiency and normative inconsistency within the EU’s legal architecture. It evaluates whether the risk classification system under the EU AI Act, combined with CSRD reporting obligations, could serve as a foundation for integrating environmental metrics into AI compliance assessments. Ultimately, the paper argues that digital sustainability must be recognised as an autonomous dimension of corporate AI governance — and that without deliberate regulatory integration, the EU risks institutionalising an accountability deficit at the intersection of digital regulation and climate policy.

Biography

İdil Kanadoğlu is an LL.M. candidate in Law and Technology at Tilburg University, the Netherlands, where she studies on a European Union Jean Monnet full scholarship. She completed her undergraduate legal education at Yeditepe University Faculty of Law in Istanbul, and pursued a minor in Information Technologies Law. During her undergraduate studies, she participated in the Erasmus exchange programme at Maastricht University.

Her postgraduate coursework covers artificial intelligence regulation, privacy and data protection, European intellectual property law, and the governance of financial technology. Since March 2026, she has been working as a student assistant at Tilburg University under the supervision of Prof. Eleni Kosta, conducting legal research and drafting memoranda on EU regulatory frameworks, including AI regulation, data protection, and digital governance.

In addition to her academic work, she is a member of the Istanbul Bar Association.

Her paper examines the structural gap between corporate AI compliance obligations and ESG reporting frameworks under EU law, analysing how the EU AI Act and the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) interact at the level of corporate governance. The study argues that digital sustainability must be recognised as an autonomous dimension of corporate AI governance.