GreenOps in Action: How IT Teams Can Drive Sustainability and Save Costs Now

Sustainable IT Architectures offer a powerful message: sustainability is no longer a fringe concern—it is a critical, measurable, and actionable constraint that must be embedded into every IT decision.

For IT leaders, cloud practitioners, and sustainability champions, this blog post provides the clarity and tools needed to make meaningful, measurable progress by adopting a sustainable focus.

The Urgent Case for Sustainable IT

The technology sector’s environmental footprint is scaling rapidly, reaching a carbon impact roughly equal to that of oil refining and surpassing both aviation and agriculture. This staggering growth is being fuelled primarily by Artificial Intelligence (AI).

We are currently operating under a "seductive delusion of limitless abundance in computing," where IT resources are often perceived as "free," thereby discouraging efficiency. However, the data reveals the hidden costs:

• Massive Infrastructure Demand: Investments in new data centres, driven largely by AI, are estimated at $450 billion. Modern high-density AI data centres can consume up to 5 gigawatts (enough to power 5 Million homes).

• Water Stress: The immense heat generated by these high-density racks (some demanding up to 600 kilowatts) requires massive cooling, often relying heavily on fresh potable drinking water. This is causing significant environmental stress in drought-prone areas, highlighting the need for architects to prioritise low water stress locations.

• Uncontrolled Costs: Beyond environmental impact, cloud costs are already out of control, exceeding budgets by an average of 17%, and in some client cases, by 2.5 to 3 times original projections.

The good news? Optimisation for reduced carbon emissions almost always results in reduced costs. By banding together and applying pressure through organisations like SustainableIT.org, the Green Software Foundation, the green Web Foundation and the Climate Action Tech community IT teams can establish sustainability as a necessary constraint.

Understanding GreenOps: Beyond the Cloud

GreenOps is defined as the set of principles and practices organisations use to manage the environmental impact and improve the sustainability of their technology portfolio.

While FinOps focuses narrowly on maximising business value from cost control and efficiency, GreenOps broadens this scope to include the full technology portfolio—not just cloud resources, but also mobile devices, laptops, networks, and SaaS applications. GreenOps employs a crucial cradle-to-grave perspective, looking at everything from asset procurement and embodied carbon to decommissioning and e-waste management.

GreenOps and FinOps are fundamentally cooperative disciplines. Techniques leveraged by both—such as right-sizing virtual machines and eliminating "zombie workloads" and "zombie data" (data that is never accessed)—deliver dual benefits: reducing costs and environmental impact.

The Four Dimensions of IT Impact

To successfully adopt a sustainable focus, IT teams must understand the four critical environmental dimensions where their decisions have consequences:

1. Energy Consumption: This includes everything from large data centres to end-user devices like mobile phones.

2. Carbon Emissions (GHG): A serious concern, particularly as high-demand data centres sometimes bypass traditional grids to set up their own power generation units, introducing direct emissions.

3. Water Usage: Often underestimated, water consumption by data centers can deplete or pollute local water tables, especially when facilities are built in water-stressed areas.

4. E-Waste: Currently, only about 10–20% of electronic devices are recycled, with the rest contributing to landfills. Poor user experience (UX) design decreases the time tools are used, contributing to greater impact and e-waste.

Your GreenOps Roadmap: Best Practices for IT Teams

Implementing GreenOps requires defining objectives and setting clear targets. While many organisations start by measuring carbon, goals can also include reducing stranded data, establishing a baseline for sustainability data coverage, or committing to buying from sustainable vendors.

Here are key strategies IT teams can adopt today:

• Standardisation is Critical: Aligning with ISO standards (like those promoted by the Green Software Foundation) is "critically important". This standardises communication and enables accurate Scope 3 reporting, ensuring that the environmental data provided by vendors is trustworthy.

• Go Beyond PUE: While metrics like Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) are useful, architects should recognise that PUE is receiving pushback as large tech companies achieve similar efficiency levels. Instead, prioritise location-based data. When selecting data centre or cloud regions, analyse grid carbon intensity (how clean the local power grid is) and water access/stress levels.

• Strategic Workload Placement: Architects must understand their data distribution approach to select locations based on both lower carbon intensity and lower water stress. Professionals must "do your homework" on cloud providers; for instance, Google is currently providing useful environmental data like Carbon Free Energy percentage, which goes beyond the Scope 1 and 2 emissions reported by others (like AWS).

• Empower Procurement: GreenOps enables procurement teams to put pressure on vendors to be transparent about their environmental impact and embed sustainability metrics directly into contracts.

• Optimise the Application Layer: Decisions about application design matter. Scheduling non-critical tasks, such as batch loads, to run when the grid intensity is low ensures you utilise greener energy.

Join the GreenOps Movement

The visibility of sustainability issues is growing rapidly, with Gartner forecasting that 75% of IT organisations will integrate sustainability into their core strategies within the next few years. By proactively adopting GreenOps principles, IT teams are not just mitigating climate risk; they are driving efficiency and maximising profitability.

If you are just starting your GreenOps journey or looking to refine your approach, collaboration is key. We must band together in organisations like SustainableIT.org and SustainableArchitectures.org to learn, share standards, and apply collective pressure to ensure a sustainable future for technology.

References

1. SustainableIT.org - www.sustainableit.org

2. ISO standards - www.iso.org/standards

3. Green Software Foundation - greensoftware.foundation

4. Green Web Foundation - www.thegreenwebfoundation.org

5. Climate Action Tech community - climateaction.tech

6. Green IO - greenio.tech

7. FinOps Foundation GreenOps / Sustainability - www.finops.org/wg/sustainability