How Automattic is Tackling Carbon Emissions, with Yanir Seroussi

BySteve Burge

Yanir Seroussi is a data scientist for Automattic and lives in Brisbane, Australia.

It can be hard to remember with all the craziness of 2020, but the year started with epic bushfires in Australia. It was the worst fire season on record with more than 15,000 different fires and nearly three billion animals killed or displaced. Those fires were widely blamed on climate change.

Yanir was motivated to start working to combat climate change. Automattic has servers in many data centers around the world, operated by different providers. Yanir wanted to know if it was possible to reduce or eliminate the carbon emissions from all those servers. The answer was “yes!”

Yanir wrote about how Automattic became carbon neutral, and in this interview we find out more of the story.

Video Interview with Yanir

  • 1 min: Yanir's one recommendation – Erika's post.
  • 2 mins: What inspired Yanir's interest in environmental issues.
  • 3 mins: Employee Resource Groups at Automattic.
  • 4 mins: Bushfires in Australia.
  • 7 mins: How change happens at Automattic.
  • 9 mins: Using WordPress and P2 for collaboration.
  • 12 mins: Researching how to tackle the problem for Automattic.
  • 14 mins: Are emissions in Scope 1, Scope 2, or Scope 3?
  • 17 mins: Calculating emissions for web servers.
  • 21 mins: Using electricityMap to see the climate impact of electricity.
  • 22 mins: Making a decision on the right solution using Offset Guide and Gold Standard.
  • 25 mins: The United Nations offset platform connects you to reputable providers.
  • 27 mins: Simoshi, the project chosen by Automattic.
  • 29 mins: Ecologi, a very useful way to support climate positive projects.
  • 31 mins: The financial cost of paying for offsets.
  • 33 mins: What's next for Automattic's environmental efforts? Will business travel be impacted?

All the PublishPress interviews

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *