FinOps, But With a Carbon KPI - My Intro to GreenOps
One of the most impressive projects in modern human history is how we dealt with the ozone hole—and the Montreal Protocol.
You could call the “closing” of the ozone hole one of the most successful and precise environmental projects ever done, because it wasn’t driven by emotion—it was driven by research: tracking metrics, drawing logical conclusions, keeping the issue in public awareness, and basically… we wrapped up that story.
For many years, environmental and climate issues stopped bothering me that much. But in recent years—especially since I became a dad, and with technological progress (mainly AI)—I’ve been thinking about it a lot again. Are we doing enough? And what are we leaving for our kids?
That’s what sent me on a journey that led me to the world of GreenOps—an approach that tries to take the environmental mindset and apply it to what we do in the cloud. In recent years, data centers have entered the same league as the aviation industry when it comes to carbon emissions, and with the rising demand for AI, the expectation is that this will double by 2030.
Those numbers are worrying—but there’s also something we can do about them. Companies like AWS are investing in renewable energy; we just need to pay attention to it when we make our cloud choices.
What is GreenOps?
GreenOps is relatively new, and honestly, if you Google the term, the first thing you’ll see is a picture of a fossil of some prehistoric cow-like creature. But GreenOps isn’t fundamentally different from FinOps. Both are about efficiency in the cloud—GreenOps just adds one more KPI: carbon emissions.
Still, if you want something practical, the first thing you can do is raise awareness. Awareness is the foundation of both GreenOps and FinOps. Get to know the data. How? AWS has a dashboard built for exactly this: the Carbon Footprint Tool, which shows you the emissions in your account, with filters by region or service.
Once you start getting familiar with the data—understanding how to view it—you can begin making changes that aren’t “magic,” but measurable changes that show up in real metrics.
Okay, so we have metrics. Now what?
There are two clear, fast ways to improve cloud efficiency. Each one is simple on the surface, but gets complex when you go deeper:
1. Zombies
Your cloud is full of idle environments, oversized instances, forgotten volumes. Dev and POC environments that stayed up long after you were done with them, random tests you spun up, and so on. Start hunting them down—figure out what’s not really in use and what you can drop. As you go deeper, you’ll notice patterns—maybe you can shut down some environments on weekends? Very quickly you’ll see cost savings that are also energy savings. Another helpful step: tagging. Use AWS tags so you can map your environments and services more clearly.
2. Graviton processors
You’ve probably heard about Graviton, mainly because people told you it saves money—and that’s true. But it’s also cleaner and less polluting for the exact same reason: it’s more efficient. AWS talks about similar performance to x86 at a lower price and up to 60% less energy usage.
And that’s it. You’ve started doing GreenOps.
Pick one zombie to kill, move one process to Graviton, and you’re on your way… good luck!