Find the customers that could churn. Do the math.

This episode is part of Any Job Can Be a Climate Job, a podcast exploring how people bring climate impact into everyday work, even in roles that aren't labeled 'climate.'

Ryan Sholin lives in Loudoun County, Virginia, the heart of what locals call "data center alley." He drives past 20 data centers on the way to the grocery store, and those data centers fund a big share of the property taxes that pay for his kids' schools. His job is to help decarbonize that same infrastructure. He got there through a commercial career, not a technical one, and this conversation is about finding the climate lever inside a sales role and making the business case in language leadership actually responds to.

In this episode, we cover

• The customer who ran their site through a green-website checker, got an "F," and emailed asking how to get an "A"
• How he redirected an employee-resource-group budget to fund six weeks of carbon accounting training
• Making the climate case to leadership through customer churn risk: "do the math, find the customers that could churn"
• Grid carbon intensity explained with a smoothie, and why one grid operator "comes out orange"
• The moment at Climate Week he realized he could already do the climate job

About Ryan

Ryan Sholin is a strategic account manager at Electricity Maps, where he works on decarbonizing the digital economy. He spent about seven years in commercial roles at Automattic's WordPress VIP and co-led its sustainability employee resource group. He lives in Loudoun County, Virginia, and serves on a Green Software Foundation committee.

Who this episode is for

• People in sales, account management, and other non-technical roles who don't see how they connect to climate
• Tech and software workers curious about the carbon cost of the internet
• Anyone trying to make a climate case to leadership in business terms
• Employees who want to put an ERG or an internal budget to work for impact

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Chapters

0:00 Welcome to "data center alley"
1:06 Meet Ryan: account manager at Electricity Maps
2:57 Living in Loudoun County, Virginia
5:17 How data centers fund the county and its schools
8:04 The job before climate: Automattic and WordPress VIP
10:12 The first spark: "performance is sustainability"
13:02 Reigniting a stalled sustainability group
14:45 The customer who got an "F" and wanted an "A"
16:27 Doing the math: customer churn as the business case
21:11 The ERG budget hack: training the team in carbon accounting
24:24 What stalled, and what he'd do differently
33:24 Leaving Automattic and the pay cut
36:54 Why Electricity Maps and "Never Search Alone"
42:56 How Electricity Maps works: the grid "smoothie"
47:47 Should individuals care when they charge?
50:19 2026 prediction: batteries
53:01 Wrap-up and three takeaways

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Resources mentioned

• Electricity Maps (Ryan's company)
• Green Software Foundation
• Green Web Foundation (the website carbon checker behind the "F" grade)
• Building Green Software by Anne Currie, Sarah Hsu, and Sara Bergman (O'Reilly)
• "How Better Performing Websites Can Help Save the Planet" by Jack Lenox
• OPF Academy / 1.5 Academy
• Never Search Alone by Phyl Terry
• Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson
• Form Energy
• Follow Ryan on LinkedIn and Bluesky

Disclaimer: This episode is for informational purposes only. Views are the guest's own.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

🎧 Listen to the podcast

• YouTube
• Apple Podcasts
• Substack

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

✨ Work with me
For advising, coaching, speaking: kidoki.com

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

🎙 Credits
Produced and hosted by Louisa Henry
Edited by Alex Leff
Music by Run Riot Run
Logo by Cassidy Frost

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

🤝 Sponsor or partner with the show: [email protected]

Know someone who thinks their job has nothing to do with climate? Send them this episode.