GreenOps - CloudBolt: Greener cloud usage multiplies with Kubernetes optimisation

A maturing discipline

As GreenOps and FinOps mature, it’s become clear that in the cloud, cost and carbon are no longer separate conversations; they’re deeply intertwined. This is particularly true in Kubernetes environments, where day-to-day engineering decisions directly shape both cloud spend and environmental impact.

Developers tend to overprovision Kubernetes resources for understandable reasons. It’s hard to predict workload needs in dynamic systems, requests are easy to “set high for safety” and teams naturally bias toward adding buffers to avoid outages.

The result is cloud waste that quietly compounds over time, along with an ever-expanding physical infrastructure footprint.C

Environmental drag from Kubernetes

A lot of Kubernetes waste is structural, so without a team of experts, it can add up quickly. CPU requests are frequently set far above actual usage. Memory is overprovisioned to avoid out-of-memory errors. Non-production environments run 24/7 even when no one is using them. Autoscaling simply copies the waste at scale. Each of these choices seems small in isolation, but together they create significant financial and environmental drag.

This is why tooling alone can’t fix cloud sustainability.

CloudBolt COO Rajabi: Misaligned incentives to rightsize and get things right commonly exist between development teams & platform teams. 

Despite the growing ecosystem of optimisation tools, the biggest barrier to reducing the cloud carbon footprint isn’t tooling; it’s misaligned incentives between development teams and platform teams to rightsize and become more efficient. Developers are measured on delivery speed and uptime, not efficiency. Platform teams see the bill, but don’t own the code. Some organisations have found success by going beyond a “here’s how much money you’re wasting” message and appealing to the human side of engineers, translating that same calculation into carbon impact and the real-world ramifications of that waste.

This is where ESG programs and GreenOps initiatives are starting to influence behaviour.

Tangible environmental impact

Businesses are using ESG commitments (and frankly, the personal guilt factor) to encourage teams to be more mindful of resource waste in Kubernetes environments. When teams begin to implement solutions that reduce cost and waste, being able to tie those changes to tangible environmental impact becomes a powerful motivator.

Seeing how a configuration change translates into avoided energy use or reduced emissions often drives teams to expand those efforts and do more.

From optimisation to shared accountability

However, with all of this said so far, GreenOps works best when it’s treated like governance, not just an ESG program that gets kicked off with limited impact.

Shared metrics and accountability are essential. Codifying the configuration changes that drive reductions and consistently showing that impact across development, platform, finance, and sustainability teams helps to create a common language. Engineers can see the financial and environmental impact of every line of code they deploy, while business and finance functions gain a clearer understanding of the operational realities IT teams manage.

When teams focus on sizing pods correctly and binpacking nodes to reduce the underlying infrastructure footprint, the impact is no longer insignificant.

Abstract efficiency, to real CO₂ reductions

At this point, optimisation moves beyond abstract efficiency gains or line items on a cloud bill. The results can be measured in avoided energy consumption, which translates directly into real CO₂ reductions. Cost savings are still important, but they become part of a broader story about responsible cloud usage.

As organisations continue to implement solutions to reduce cost and waste, the ability to tie those efforts to real environmental outcomes helps build momentum. It accelerates adoption, reinforces shared accountability, and brings development, platform, finance, and sustainability teams closer together. In Kubernetes-driven cloud environments, greener usage not only saves money but also multiplies impact, proving that cost optimisation and carbon reduction are fundamentally linked.

CloudBolt describes itself as the ‘cloud ROI company’ and the organisation Tweets on X here.