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Software applications and workloads, especially within the domains of Cloud computing and large-scale AI model training, exert considerable demand on computing resources, thus contributing significantly to the overall energy footprint of the IT industry. In this paper, we present an in-depth analysis of certain software coding practices that can play a substantial role in increasing the application’s overall energy consumption, primarily stemming from the suboptimal utilization of computing resources. Our study encompasses a thorough investigation of 16 distinct code smells and other coding malpractices across 31 real-world open-source applications written in Java and Python. Through our research, we provide compelling evidence that various common refactoring techniques, typically employed to rectify specific code smells, can unintentionally escalate the application’s energy consumption. We illustrate that a discerning and strategic approach to code smell refactoring can yield substantial energy savings. For selective refactorings, this yields a reduction of up to 13.1% of energy consumption and 5.1% of carbon emissions per workload on average. These findings underscore the potential of selective and intelligent refactoring to substantially increase energy efficiency of Cloud software systems.