GreenOps Practitioner Course & Certification
The practitioner course for the people who run technology. The GreenOps Practitioner Course teaches digital sustainability as an operational discipline: how to measure an estate, find the waste, read vendor evidence, and make decisions that hold up in front of a CFO. You leave able to do the work, not just talk about it.
Questions? Email: education@tbmcouncil.org
Sustainability that survives contact with operations
Built for the people who run technology
Most sustainability training teaches people to report. It produces a footprint number, a slide, a target, and very little that changes what the estate actually does on a Tuesday afternoon. GreenOps Practitioner is built the other way round. It starts from operational reality: what the telemetry shows, where energy and compute are being wasted, whether the metrics in front of you are good enough to make a decision on.
Digital sustainability has moved from a corporate narrative to an operational problem with a cost, a capacity, and a resilience dimension. Power availability constrains data centre expansion. AI is driving a step-change in rack density that many facilities cannot cool. Cloud bills and carbon come from the same idle, over-provisioned capacity. Regulation is tightening from disclosure toward evidence. The people who can act on all of this are practitioners, and most of them have never been trained to.
This course closes that gap. It is hands-on and scenario-driven. A single enterprise case study, Meridian Financial Group, runs from module two through to the capstone, so every technique is practised against a realistic organisation with real constraints, real vendors, and two live sites. You work with live grid carbon data, build a business case, run a maturity self-assessment, and design a 90-day plan you could take back to your own organisation the following week.
GreenOps Practitioner treats efficiency, utilisation, and evidence quality as the core of the discipline. Offsetting and narrative come last, if at all.
By the end of the course, you will be able to:
- Measure the environmental impact of an IT estate using operational evidence, and tell the difference between measured telemetry and weak modelling.
- Read vendor sustainability claims critically, grade the quality of the evidence behind them, and know which numbers will not survive scrutiny.
- Find the waste: over-provisioning, idle capacity, poor utilisation, and lifecycle mismanagement across data centre, cloud, software, and end-user estates.
- Build a credible GreenOps business case that connects efficiency to cost, capacity, resilience, and risk in terms a CFO will accept.
- Assess your organisation’s maturity, assign ownership, and design a 90-day plan that changes real decisions rather than producing another dashboard.
Course Structure at a Glance
Intro: Seventeen modules across three tracks, from first principles to leadership decisions. Foundation is for every practitioner. Operations and Leadership go deeper for the roles that own delivery, spend, and strategy.
Track | Modules | Focus | Audience |
Foundation | M1–M6 | Why it matters, what it is, how to measure it, reading vendor evidence, impact domains, software and emerging technology | All practitioners |
Operations | M7–M10 | Reporting to operational excellence, software engineering, procurement and supply chains, governance and maturity | Engineers, procurement, product |
Leadership | M11–M16 | Regulation, business case, strategy, courageous leadership, sustainability by IT, wrap-up and next steps | CIOs, CTOs, programme leads |
Module 0 – Course hub. Orientation, the interactive track navigator, and progress tracking across the programme.
Track 1 – Foundation (M1–M6). For all practitioners.
Why digital sustainability matters and where the waste comes from. What it actually is across its dimensions and lifecycle. How to measure it with credible, site-level evidence. How to read and grade vendor evidence. The seven impact domains across the estate. Software and emerging technology, including where AI changes the picture.
Track 2 – Operations (M7–M10). For engineers, product, and procurement.
Moving from reporting to operational excellence, including demand shifting against live grid carbon intensity and the rebound effect. Sustainable software engineering and the Software Carbon Intensity calculation. Procurement and supply chains as a lever for change. Governance and maturity, with a multi-dimensional self-assessment.
Track 3 – Leadership (M11–M16). For CIOs, CTOs, and programme leads.
The regulatory picture and what it demands as evidence. Building the year-one business case. Strategy and sequencing. Courageous leadership and the accountability patterns that make or break programmes. Sustainability by IT, including avoided-emissions and handprint claims done honestly. Wrap-up, the capstone, and a 30-day action plan.
Every technique is practiced against Meridian Financial Group, a fictional enterprise with a London and Frankfurt footprint, introduced in module two and developed through to the capstone. By the capstone you have applied every technique yourself, against an organization that behaves like a real one.
New to GreenOps? Start here.
You do not need to be a sustainability specialist to start creating value. The GreenOps Practitioner Course is a structured, practical entry point for the people who run and build technology, and the leaders who set direction.
You leave able to measure an estate, see where the waste sits, and work with finance, sustainability, and operations teams without losing the operational detail that makes the difference. Every technique is practiced against a realistic organization, so the skills transfer straight to your own.
Already doing FinOps, TBM, or ESG? This is the missing operational layer.
GreenOps is not a rebrand of sustainability reporting, and it is not a bolt-on to your cost program. It is the operational discipline that connects them.
If you run FinOps or TBM, you already hold the utilization and consumption data GreenOps depends on. This course shows you how to turn the same levers (rightsizing, demand reduction, lifecycle control) into carbon and capacity outcomes as well as cost. If you sit in sustainability or ESG, it gives you the operational and evidence foundation most disclosure work is missing: how to tell decision-ready telemetry from portfolio averages, and grade the evidence behind Scope 3 claims.
And if you lead the estate, you leave with a business case, a maturity baseline, and a sequenced plan, not another awareness deck.
GreenOps Practitioner Accreditation
The course carries a formal accreditation. The assessment is a 209-question examination organized into fifteen categories aligned to the course structure, with an 80 per cent pass threshold. It tests applied understanding across measurement, operations, and leadership decisions, not recall of definitions. Passing certifies you as a GreenOps Practitioner through the TBM Council.
This is the practitioner foundation for a broader, role-based GreenOps education program. It sits alongside the TBM Council’s wider work connecting technology cost, value, and sustainability, and provides the operational grounding that FinOps, TBM, and ESG practitioners increasingly need in the same room.
Why it matters
Idle and over-provisioned capacity shows up twice, once on the energy bill and once in the carbon account. The practitioners who can measure it honestly, find the waste, and connect it to a decision are the difference between a programme that changes the estate and one that produces slides.
That capability is scarce, and it is teachable. This course teaches it.
FAQ
Technology practitioners and the leaders who direct them: infrastructure and data centre teams, cloud and platform engineers, software teams, procurement, and CIO, CTO, and programme leadership. Foundation suits everyone; the Operations and Leadership tracks go deeper for specific roles.
No. The course starts from first principles and builds to leadership-level decisions. What helps is working in or around technology operations, because that is where the discipline applies.
Online and self-paced, across seventeen modules with interactive tools, embedded knowledge checks, reflection prompts, and scenario exercises. Two modules use live National Grid carbon intensity data so you practise against real conditions.
Certification as a GreenOps Practitioner through the TBM Council, based on an examination with an 80 per cent pass mark.
Self-paced, so it fits around delivery work; most practitioners take 10 to 13 hours.
Coming Soon
The content is authored by Mark Butcher and delivered by Posetiv, in partnership with the TBM Council. IP is retained by Posetiv.
Learn to do the work, not just report on it.
Enroll in the GreenOps Practitioner Course and leave able to measure the estate, find the waste, and make the case.
