Introduction to GreenKube

What is GreenKube?

GreenKube is an open-source FinGreenOps tool designed to help DevOps, SRE, and FinOps teams measure, understand, and reduce the carbon footprint and costs of their Kubernetes infrastructure.

It combines FinOps (financial optimization) with GreenOps (environmental sustainability) into a unified platform that provides:

• Periodic monitoring and historical estimates of CPU-based energy use, CO₂e, and OpenCost allocations
• Actionable recommendations to reduce both cloud bills and carbon footprint
• Carbon visibility with data export capabilities for reporting and BI integration
• Historical analysis with flexible time ranges

The Problem

Cloud computing is responsible for approximately 2-4% of global CO₂ emissions — comparable to the airline industry. As organizations scale their Kubernetes infrastructure, they face two mounting challenges:

1. Lack of Carbon Visibility

Most engineering teams have no idea how much CO₂ their Kubernetes workloads emit. Without measurement, there can be no meaningful reduction. Tech SMEs in particular lack access to dedicated carbon monitoring tools that are both affordable and easy to operate.

2. Cost Inefficiency

Studies show that 30-40% of cloud spending is wasted on idle, oversized, or poorly optimized resources. This waste translates directly into unnecessary carbon emissions.

The Solution

GreenKube addresses both challenges simultaneously by:

1. Estimating Energy

Calculates per-pod energy consumption (Joules) using Prometheus metrics and cloud instance power profiles based on the Cloud Carbon Footprint methodology.

2. Tracking Carbon

Converts CPU-based energy estimates to CO₂e using time-varying Electricity Maps or Wattnet data when available, with configured zone and global-intensity fallbacks.

3. Optimizing Resources

Identifies optimization opportunities — zombie pods, oversized workloads, autoscaling candidates — with estimated savings in both cost and CO₂.

4. Reporting

Generates detailed reports by pod, namespace, and time period, exportable to CSV or JSON for easy integration with your existing tools.

Who Is It For?

Role	Use Case
DevOps / SRE	Monitor cluster efficiency, identify wasteful workloads, right-size resources
FinOps	Optimize cloud costs with visibility into per-workload spending and recommendations
Engineering Managers / CTOs	Get high-level dashboards showing cost and carbon trends across the organization
Platform Engineers	Deploy a self-hosted monitoring stack with Helm, integrate with existing Prometheus/OpenCost
Sustainability-conscious teams	Track and reduce your infrastructure’s carbon footprint with concrete data

Key Concepts

FinGreenOps

GreenKube introduces the concept of FinGreenOps — the convergence of:

• FinOps: Financial management and optimization of cloud costs
• GreenOps: Environmental sustainability and carbon footprint reduction

By combining these disciplines, teams can make decisions that are both cost-effective and environmentally responsible.

Energy Estimation

GreenKube estimates energy consumption using:

• CPU utilization metrics from Prometheus
• Cloud instance power profiles (min/max watts per vCPU) based on the Cloud Carbon Footprint methodology
• Dynamic power modeling that accounts for idle and active power components

Carbon Calculation

The carbon emission formula is:

CO₂e (grams) = Energy (kWh) × Grid Intensity (gCO₂e/kWh) × PUE

Where:

• Energy is calculated from CPU utilization and instance power profiles
• Grid Intensity comes from Electricity Maps or Wattnet when configured and available, otherwise from the per-zone or global fallback
• PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) accounts for datacenter overhead (cooling, networking, etc.)

Technology Stack

Component	Technology
Backend	Python 3.13+, FastAPI, asyncio
Frontend	SvelteKit, ECharts, Tailwind CSS
Data Collection	Prometheus, OpenCost, Kubernetes API
Carbon Data	Electricity Maps API (default) or Wattnet API (EU-only, free), Boavizta API
Storage	PostgreSQL, SQLite
Deployment	Helm Chart, Docker (multi-arch amd64/arm64)
CLI	Typer + Rich
Settings	pydantic-settings (env-driven, type-safe config)
Logging	structlog (JSON or console, Loki-ready)
Type checking	Pyrefly (static analysis, pre-commit)
Toolchain	uv (dependency management, lockfile)
Security	OWASP headers, SCRAM-SHA-256, read-only containers, Trivy CI scanning

Next Steps

Ready to get started? Follow the guides below:

Quick Start → Get GreenKube running in 5 minutes

Installation → Detailed installation and deployment guide

Architecture → Understand how GreenKube works under the hood