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Telemetry26 October 20265 min read

Carbon as an SLO: adding emissions to your observability stack

Teams already track reliability with service-level objectives. The same habit can apply to carbon: set a target, measure it with the rest of your telemetry and treat a regression as a defect.

In this post
  1. What it looks like
  2. Joined-up with cost
  3. How to start
  4. Sources and further reading

What it looks like

  • A carbon-per-unit measure, calculated from resource use and grid intensity.
  • A target for each service, reviewed as part of the normal cycle.
  • Dashboards that show it next to latency and cost.

Joined-up with cost

Energy and cloud cost are closely linked, so many efficiency changes help both. Where they diverge, make the trade-off visible rather than optimising one in secret.

How to start

  1. Choose one service and one carbon measure.
  2. Add it to the existing dashboard.
  3. Set a modest target and watch for a quarter.
  4. Add it to design reviews for new work.

Sources and further reading

  1. Green Software Foundation. Software Carbon Intensity (SCI) Specification. sci.greensoftware.foundation.

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