GreenOps 101

And GreenOps is how, in the same way as FinOps, we create a cultural practice to ensure that we're getting the best value out of our cloud spend. GreenOps is about maximising the value of the emissions we create, and specifically, we're generally looking at our emissions from cloud or IT usage when people discuss green ops. However, it is definitely broader than that. A lot of us who are in this world from the FinOps space, obviously, come from the IT and cloud background.

So how do GreenOps and FinOps align and differ?

As stated in my recent blog about Ferno Vogel's conversation on cost being a good proxy for green, in some cases, it can be.

When you're looking at usage optimisation in the cloud, where you're reducing usage, it can be said that you're aligning to the reduction in carbon that's being used to manage or create your infrastructure. While other types of FinOps activities have no impact on GreenOps, such as rate optimisation, including RIs and savings plans, it's challenging to prove a direct link to reducing carbon or CO2e emissions, which we'll explain in a bit as to why that might have an impact.

When we consider it as a cultural practice, however, there are additional areas where it can align. We're trying to get people's buy-in to act in a way that's more efficient in terms of CO2e within their organisation. That's very similar to how we're trying to achieve more cost efficiencies as an organisation in FinOps, where we're aiming to educate people to understand and visualise the data, and make better data-driven decisions. That is very similar for both FinOps and GreenOps. In many ways, they do align, but in some cases, the actions you take in FinOps may not have any GreenOps impact.

Greenhouse Gas Protocol

The next topic to discuss is the principles outlined in the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, which I believe is a valuable approach to understanding what we need to consider in our GreenOps practices and actions. The Greenhouse Gas Protocol comprises five key principles, specifically focusing on accounting and reporting principles, relevance, completeness, consistency, transparency, and accuracy.

So for relevance, what we want to do is ensure that the inventory for our greenhouse gases appropriately reflects the real emissions of the company so that it's useful data.

We aim to, with our comprehensive approach, account for and report all emissions and activities within the chosen boundary and justify the specific analysis we've made.

We want it to be consistent (Consistency). We're following the same methodologies to get meaningful comparisons over time. So the check you do in month one isn't principally different to how you've done it in month six and therefore you can't align the data together to make a real comparison.

Transparency requires addressing all relevant issues factually and coherently, based on something that can be clearly audited, much like in our financial world. You need to disclose any assumptions you've made and make references as to where you've made calculations, etc. Same as you do in accountancy.

And accuracy, we need to ensure that the quantification of missions is systematically not over- or under-estimated. Something to avoid is deciding to disregard anything below x as it doesn't count because it's part of the long tail and too hard to calculate. Actually, by doing that, you're automatically going to be underestimating, so you're systematically underestimating your emissions.

Scopes - Scope 1, 2 and 3 explained

To help us calculate our CO2e usage, we have quite a task on our hands, to help split this task up, GHG has 3 “Scopes” that cover any gases in the Kyoto Protocol.

Scopes are used for various reasons, but one of the primary reasons cited in the GHG protocols is to prevent double counting or ambiguity regarding where it should be calculated. These scopes then help us define action plans that are more specific to those scopes, rather than something general for all emissions.

The three scopes are defined as follows.

Scope 1 - Direct GHG emissions - Owned and controlled by the company in question, such as factory equipment that’s used to manufacture goods, or the vehicles used to transport goods (or people).

Scope 2 - Electricity indirect GHG emissions - emissions generated by the production of the electricity (also steam and heating/cooling) that has been purchased/consumed by the company. While the emissions may physically occur where the electricity is generated, they must be included in the company's emissions.

Scope 3 - Other indirect GHG emissions - Considered optional in the GHG protocols, scope 3 is likely the largest and most important set of emissions that impact an organisation. They are emissions created as a consequence of the activities of the company, but occur from sources not owned or controlled by the company - excluding scope 2. This even includes employees' business travel (in non-company-owned vehicles), assets that are leased, SaaS and many more things. So you can see why people don’t want to do it, because it’s complex, but you can also see why it’s the biggest and most important number.

Some statistics shared on LinkedIn by a friend Mark Butcher suggests that companies like Dell, Microsoft and Google who've done real scope 3 reviews 90% plus of their emissions are found in scope 3 and I think that's really interesting when you have providers not demonstrating their scope 3, you know that the numbers aren't really reflective of the realities.

CO2e - Explained

So we've talked about CO2e. Why do we talk about CO2e? CO2e is carbon dioxide equivalent. As the guardian describes it, it's “a standard unit for measuring carbon footprints. The idea is to express the impact of each different greenhouse gas in terms of the amount of CO2 that would create the same amount of warming. That way, a carbon footprint consisting of lots of different greenhouse gases can be expressed as a single number.” (Source

Hopefully that makes sense. It allows us to use one single unit even though there are seven greenhouse gases in the Kyoto agreements which are worth just contemplating and discussing another time but this allows us to have a single unit.

Other things to consider

There are a lot of different methodologies and metrics out there at the moment, so I won’t bore you with them all. Three of the main ones that people are using to work out cloud sustainability specifically are things like power usage effectiveness, PUE, carbon usage effectiveness, CUE and energy reuse factor, ERF. And here's a brief description of the three

3 key indicators need to be integrated into your sustainability strategy in order to make demonstrable progress:

• Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE)

• Carbon Usage Effectiveness (CUE)

• Energy Reuse Factor (ERF

Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) Ratio of total energy consumed by a data centre vs energy used specifically by computer equipment. The lower the score, the better.

Carbon Usage Effectiveness (CUE) Evolution of PUE measures total CO2 emissions from total energy consumption of a data centre. Tailored to data centres, so a better metric of environmental impact.

Energy Reuse Factor (ERF) Ratio of reused energy vs total energy consumed in a data centre – this should be as high as possible, indicating a higher rate of energy recycling.

When examining these numbers, it's also worth considering factors such as locational versus market-based electricity (grid data) usage. I think that's really important. And the locational data around where your data centre may be is really important to give you a realistic impact for your usage. Just because you buy or pay for energy that is from renewable sources doesn't mean that you're using electricity from renewable sources at the time, and to be realistic in your carbon impact, that needs to be assessed. Here’s a great link to explain more.

So where can you get your data?

Well, it's challenging at the moment and even Werner Vogel admits that. He said in his speech that in the absence of giving the information of milligrams of CO2 used by your services, you can use cost as a proxy, as mentioned earlier in the blog. And that is really around the fact that they maybe haven't looked at scope three or the fact that the breakdown of the data isn’t great in their tooling.

There are tools out there now that allow you to get a better idea of this. And if you would like any more information on those, feel free to contact me. One of the things I think is worth looking at is something like Cloud Jewels by Etsy, which has a principle on how to look IT/server consumption and you can build upon that. Additionally, there are now tools that have been developed for the FinOps space, building out green ops capabilities and sustainability reviews. And there are tools that have been built out in the market for GreenOps specifically, some are even open source ones as well.

So it's really the right time to start having a look into this world. Hopefully, now you have a basic understanding of what people are talking about when they talk about Green Ops.