Increasing consideration of the concept of sustainability within information technology (IT) organizations and information systems (IS) management has lead to rising challenges regarding the application of existing, non- or partially sustainable IT process models. Although IT reference models exist within the scope of sustainable IS management, the integration of sustainability aspects into well-established IT reference models of IS management and IT governance still lacks theoretical foundation. The purpose of this paper is to explore the specificities of sustainability in the current COBIT 5 process reference model. Based on an argumentative-deductive analysis of COBIT 5, enriched with results of a survey, we examine the significance and specificities of sustainability in COBIT 5 from the user perspective. Our findings provide valuable insights referring to sustainability-related deficits of COBIT 5. Furthermore, this paper can serve as a theoretical basis for further research that eventually takes a sustainability-oriented adjustment of COBIT 5 into account