An early focus on energy

While Khan sees his trajectory as non-linear versus peers, an outsider perspective reveals a pattern of focus across roles with a dedicated emphasis on key topics.

Growing up in Yorkshire, he studied at Loughborough in the Midlands. His first graduate job was in engineering in the “dark depths” of Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station in Nottingham. (NB: Ratcliffe-on-Soar’s coal-fired power station was the last of its kind in the UK – ultimately closing on 30 September 2024.)

“Coal and gas were a huge part of the energy mix. It kept the UK running, but it also helped me understand the necessity for the energy transition,” Khan says. “And while there, I completed a master’s in renewable energy.”

“Of our many initiatives, the one that stands out most is reducing the impacts of customers who are using our products and services on Scope 3 emissions. That’s an important aspect for BT and the retail business”

Sarwar Khan, BT Group

He then worked in Sweden, accelerating and developing large-scale offshore wind farms. The Nordics then were pioneering the space, and already publicising “heavy ambition” regarding clean energy “that we see today in full force”, he adds.

From there, he took a role in Germany, “testing out some of the smaller, decentralised stuff”. That included technologies for homes and businesses, like solar power, solar photovoltaic batteries, energy storage solutions, heat pumps, electric vehicles and electric vehicle charging points.

“All the trendy stuff we talk about now, that was part of my role in 2012 when it was still emerging and the commercials didn’t always stack up as well,” he says. “Many people didn’t know what a heat pump was. There really wasn’t much of an appetite for electric vehicles. Everyone was still hesitant about or had range anxiety, et cetera.”

In 2014, Khan jumped again when energy company E.ON spun up a startup incubator. This time, founding IoT-connected products developer Novo, which today remains within E.ON.

Khan’s idea was to create solutions that helped small business owners reduce energy use, beginning in Germany and Spain. That included offerings that reduced energy and carbon across heating and cooling applications.

“[It was] a unique opportunity to found a company,” says Khan. “But quickly, I was thirsty to have a much bigger impact. And that’s how I moved to BT, in 2020.”

Shooting for the moon

Initially, Khan targeted a product strategist opening at BT, looking at product development and innovation, with IoT “a big part of the equation”. Realising BT’s ambitions around being “a trusted connector” as the UK’s leading networking provider, over time, he sought even broader reach and deeper impact.

In December 2021, he became global head of sustainability. He had garnered support from corporate leaders to build a sustainability practice, which, at the time, was “a moonshot idea based on my background”. The team and its work continued to grow, with December 2023 seeing Khan named sustainability director.

Fundamentally, it’s all about supporting business customers of all sizes worldwide to use technology responsibly, predominantly when they buy BT products and services, and to drive sustainable growth.

BT estimates that when fully rolled out, Global Fabric will slash electricity use in its current global networks by 79%, from 39,890MWh/year to 8,326MWh/year

“That bold ambition really appealed and excited me,” says Khan. “And strategy is always a good starting point, giving a helicopter view of what’s happening in business operations as well as working on really cool stuff and emerging initiatives.”

He notes that, while sustainability in itself is nothing new to BT, which was also early on setting science-based targets, a gap remained to be filled, not least because the demand profile was changing, moving more toward supporting customers.

The practice focused on taking subject-matter expertise and backgrounds in engineering, tech and sustainability, and leveraging that as a top connectivity provider internally and across partnerships and supply chains to help customers power their own sustainability journeys.

It helped that he loves inspiring colleagues and teams.

“I think that was where there was a real need for someone like myself to step in,” says Khan. “That part was very new, and we’ve evolved it over the years. And that’s the bit that really interests me.”

Working towards achievable targets

How businesses conceptualise and develop sustainability is also continuing to change “mostly for the right reasons”, he says. Most large organisations now have a net-zero target, as do myriad businesses of all sizes. Today, however, they’ve moved from target setting increasingly into working out how to execute those targets, and actually move forward towards achieving them. 

And despite some negative geopolitics and rowing back in some areas in 2024-5 especially, sustainability as a topic has increasingly moved into the public domain, with multiple parties and people prepared to hold organisations to account – from investors, to communities, customers, the supply chain, or in business operations. And because sustainability, ultimately, is a “team support”, action relies on buy-in from different backgrounds and multiple stakeholders.

For Scope 3 goals, for example, you cannot deliver them without procurement on board to help tackle supply chain challenges. And you cannot decarbonise operations, all the way from networks to cloud-based services and AI, without having the chief information officer (CIO) and chief technology officer (CTO) fully on board.

Sectoral impacts that affect sustainability must be considered in every case. Building ecosystems, education, culture and processes is also essential facilitation; embedding sustainability has to be part of people’s jobs, not an add-on. Only then can you build meaningful impact at scale.

“We are now seeing people finally moving from talking to doing,” says Khan. “That’s the other bit that interests me – the elements of not necessarily just writing a strategy for sustainability, but actually empowering others.”

Sustainability and AI

Khan sees AI developments as key to optimal solutions and sustainability. Of course, it’s in the news every day, and it’s difficult for regulation and other sectors to keep up. The technology is taking off and accelerating – but certain “bottlenecks” aren’t getting enough attention, he adds.

He doesn’t mean from an engineering perspective or in terms of the way machines are learning as they evolve towards less traditional statistical models, as long as the processing power can handle it.

But when it comes to growing AI demand without damaging sustainability, by adding back more gas, there’ll be a need to consider inferencing at scale, federated impacts, and local and distributed datacentre impacts in relation to planning and grid connection. It’s a lot more difficult to decarbonise gas than electricity, Khan warns.

“If the whole premise of generative AI is getting the machine to learn from other sources and to do it at scale, the more data you feed in, the more powerful the AI model becomes,” he says. “However, the real bottleneck is energy and water. That’s your resource limitation. And that’s not being talked about enough, in my view.”

We are now seeing people finally moving from talking to doing. That’s the other bit that interests me – the elements of not necessarily just writing a strategy for sustainability, but actually empowering others

The right market mechanisms must be built in. Done right, a huge opportunity can result not just for AI sectors, but for green industries and skills. AI and sustainability may be the two big growth sectors for the UK and Europe.

“They go hand in hand. It is growth for two sectors at the same time,” he says.

Making a difference

All in all, the role remains challenging, rewarding and continuously evolving, driven by rapid business and technological change against global political and regulatory dynamics. For Khan, it’s all about keeping sustainability at the forefront of people’s minds and ensuring impact.

In the past year, BT has also reduced water consumption by 17%, recovered 1,750 tonnes of waste and reused 1,548 items in its network.

By 31 March 2031, the company wants to slash operational emissions by 90% versus full-year 2017, having so far achieved a 52% reduction, reported in 2025. In the larger supply chain tranche, it’s targeting 42% lower emissions by 2031 and 25% in 2025, versus 2017. The net-zero target for the supply chain and customer carbon is 2041.

“I want to reinforce that climate change is one of the greatest ever challenges faced by humanity,” says Khan. “It’s not just about future generations. The impact is real now.”