Chef's Kitchen Rule #63: A Clean Kitchen Saves Both Money and the Planet
CloudCostChefs Team
Chef's Kitchen Rule #63: A Clean Kitchen Saves Both Money and the Planet
Every watt powering a zombie instance is a watt that didn't need to burn. In 2026, the best kitchens don't just optimize for cost — they optimize for carbon too. Same cleanup work, double the impact.
When a FinOps Team Added Carbon to Their Dashboard
A FinOps team managing $4.2M in annual cloud spend had all the usual bases covered — solid RI coverage, well-structured Savings Plans, regular cost reviews. They were sharp. But when they ran carbon metrics alongside their cost reports, the picture changed fast.
28% of their compute was pure waste. Not just dollars — kilowatt-hours and carbon tied to workloads nobody used. Zombie instances across three regions. Dev environments running through every weekend. Resources that showed up as “covered” on commitments but delivered zero business value.
Before
- Spend: $4.2M/year
- Emissions: ~1,200 metric tons CO2e
- Compute waste: 28%
- Sustainability visibility: None
After (6 Months)
- Spend: $2.9M/year
- Emissions: ~780 metric tons CO2e
- Cost reduction: 31%
- Carbon reduction: 35%
Same optimization work. Same team. The only difference? They could see the carbon numbers too. And when leadership saw dollars and CO2 side by side, optimization budgets approved themselves.
The FinOps-Sustainability Disconnect
Here's the uncomfortable truth: fewer than 20% of FinOps teams currently collaborate with their sustainability counterparts, according to the FinOps Foundation's own data. Two teams working on overlapping problems, sitting in different meetings, reporting to different stakeholders.
However, 50% of FinOps practitioners see sustainability collaboration becoming part of their job in the near future. The EMEA region is already leading — with nearly twice the collaboration rate compared to North America.
Cloud Sustainability Is Now an Official FinOps Capability
This isn't a nice-to-have anymore. The FinOps Foundation formalized Cloud Sustainability as a framework capability within the Optimize Usage & Cost domain — sitting alongside Rate Optimization, Workload Optimization, and Licensing & SaaS.
What the Capability Covers
- Determining Cloud Sustainability policies and guidelines
- Aligning cloud sustainability strategy with cost optimization goals
- Identifying opportunities for sustainability improvement
- Engaging stakeholders to evaluate sustainability effectively
The Maturity Model
Crawl
Track carbon separately from cost reports
Walk
Integrate carbon metrics into some cost workflows
Run
Full cost + carbon integration across all decisions
Every Wasted Dollar = Wasted Energy
The FinOps Foundation flags 20–30% of enterprise cloud spend as waste — idle instances, over-provisioned compute, orphaned storage. That same 20–30% maps directly to unnecessary energy consumption and carbon emissions.
As Dr. Werner Vogels noted at AWS re:Invent: frugal cloud architecture correlates directly with lower carbon emissions. When engineers rightsize compute, they reduce both spend and power consumption. When non-production environments shut down outside business hours, the savings show up on the cloud bill and quietly in lower emissions.
The Numbers That Should Wake Up Your C-Suite
1.5%
of global electricity consumed by data centers, growing 12% per year
Source: IEA 2025 Energy and AI Report
80–97%
of enterprise emissions are Scope 3 — cloud usage falls here
All hyperscaler emissions = your Scope 3
20–35%
expected spend reduction from Green FinOps initiatives
With 25–45% CO2e reduction alongside
1,050 TWh
projected data center electricity by 2026 — more than Japan
Source: IEA projections
Regulation Is No Longer Optional
Visibility of cloud usage in terms of carbon is becoming increasingly important for cost allocation, reporting, and forecasting. New regulations are making this mandatory:
EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD)
Requires detailed emissions disclosure including Scope 3 — which includes all cloud provider emissions. Affects companies operating in or selling to the EU.
California SB-253 (Climate Corporate Data Accountability Act)
Requires companies with $1B+ revenue to disclose Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions — including cloud infrastructure carbon footprint.
SEC Climate Disclosure Rules
Public companies must report material climate risks and emissions data, putting cloud infrastructure carbon squarely in scope.
The message is clear: if you can't measure your cloud carbon, you can't report it. And soon, not reporting isn't an option.
Carbon Metrics Ship in Your Existing Tools
You don't need to build anything from scratch. Carbon dashboards are now built into the tools you already use — or available as free, open-source add-ons.
Cloud Provider Native Tools (Free)
AWS Customer Carbon Footprint Tool
Built into AWS Cost Management console. GHG Protocol aligned. Tracks emissions across all AWS services.
Google Cloud Carbon Footprint
Reports gross and net carbon emissions with project-level granularity. Available in Cloud Console.
Azure Emissions Impact Dashboard
Microsoft Sustainability portal. Tracks Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions for Azure workloads.
Third-Party & Open-Source Tools
OpenCost (CNCF Incubating Project)
Free, open-source Kubernetes cost monitoring with built-in carbon cost tracking. Uses Cloud Carbon Footprint coefficients to associate estimated carbon costs to disk, node, and network assets. Enable with a single Helm flag.
In 2025, OpenCost added MCP server support, letting AI agents query cost and carbon data in real-time.
Greenpixie
ISO-14064 verified hourly emissions data across AWS, Azure, and GCP. Usage-based carbon measurement (not spend-based), including carbon, energy, and water consumption. Available on AWS Marketplace.
Partnered with Flexera in 2025 to integrate carbon metrics directly into cloud cost optimization workflows.
CloudBolt + StormForge
Since acquiring StormForge in March 2025, CloudBolt delivers AI-driven Kubernetes pod and node optimization. Shared dashboards display per-deployment cost and emission impacts for dev, platform, finance, and sustainability teams.
A retail customer reported 30% cloud spend reduction using CloudBolt's automation across AWS and Azure.
Cloud Carbon Footprint (by ThoughtWorks)
Open-source tool providing carbon cost data across AWS, Azure, and GCP. Powers OpenCost's carbon coefficient data. Self-hostable with detailed methodology documentation.
Pro Tip
Add carbon columns to your existing cost reports. OpenCost's carbon metrics are free and open source — enable them with a single Helm flag (carbonEstimates: true). When leadership sees dollars and CO2 side by side, optimization budgets approve themselves.
For non-Kubernetes workloads, start with your cloud provider's native carbon tools — they're already in your console, free, and GHG Protocol aligned.
The Nuance: Where Cost and Carbon Diverge
Cost optimization and carbon reduction aren't always perfectly aligned. Smart practitioners understand where they diverge:
Reserved Instance lock-in
Committed discounts can discourage rightsizing or turning down resources — you're already paying for the capacity. The cost incentive conflicts with the carbon incentive.
Region pricing vs. carbon intensity
The cheapest region isn't always the greenest. A region powered by coal is cheaper but dirtier than one powered by hydro. Carbon-aware workload placement sometimes costs more.
The 80/20 rule applies
For the vast majority of optimization actions — rightsizing, scheduling, eliminating waste — cost and carbon align perfectly. Focus there first. The divergences matter at advanced maturity levels.
Your Green FinOps Playbook
Getting started doesn't require a new team, new budget, or new tools. It requires connecting the dots you already have.
Add Carbon Columns to Cost Reports
- Enable your cloud provider's native carbon footprint tool (free, already available)
- For Kubernetes: enable OpenCost carbon estimates with
carbonEstimates: true - Add CO2e column next to cost in your weekly/monthly reports
Invite Sustainability to the Table
- Add your sustainability contact to the FinOps Slack channel or recurring meeting
- Share existing waste reports — your waste is their Scope 3 problem
- Co-present optimization results to leadership showing both metrics
Target the Usual Suspects
- Kill zombie instances — the #1 source of both waste dollars and waste carbon
- Schedule dev/test environments to shut down evenings and weekends
- Rightsize over-provisioned compute — every size down reduces watts
Mature into Carbon-Aware Operations
- Evaluate region-level carbon intensity when placing workloads
- Schedule batch jobs and AI training for renewable energy peaks
- Include carbon KPIs in engineering team dashboards
The Bottom Line
Green FinOps isn't a separate initiative. It's the same work you're already doing — with an extra column in the report. Every zombie instance you kill saves dollars AND watts. Every weekend shutdown saves budget AND carbon. Every rightsizing action reduces spend AND emissions.
The teams that figure this out get double the executive support for the same optimization work. Finance cares about the cost savings. The board cares about the sustainability story. Same cleanup, two wins.
A clean kitchen saves both money and the planet. Start by adding that carbon column to your next cost report.