When Do Microservices Save Energy? Evidence from Environmental Simulation Workflows

Abstract

Environmental simulation models support scenario analysis, calibration, and decision-making, but repeated execution can incur significant energy costs. Microservices offer modularity and scalability, yet their low-carbon impact remains unclear because decomposition introduces orchestration, communication, persistence, and idle-service overheads. This paper evaluates four environmental models as containerised microservice workflows, comparing monolithic execution with polling-based and event-driven orchestration. Results show that microservices increase energy consumption for smaller or tightly coupled models, where coordination overhead dominates. For a larger workflow, event-driven orchestration reduces energy use despite longer runtime, while selective downstream re-execution achieves a 41% reduction during repeated parameter exploration.