🌍 CAT Newsletter #156 - 2023-02-05
Hey CATs,
Welcome to issue 156 of the climateAction.tech (CAT) Newsletter - your weekly summary of what's happening inside the CAT community, and in the wider world of climate and tech. New to CAT or looking to re-discover the community? Try out our onboarding checklist.
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Stay safe & healthy 😌 💚 🐱
CAT Community News
💚 New CAT Organizer!
We’re delighted to announce that Veronica Hotton has joined the ranks and is now a CAT Organiser! If you want to learn more about how we organize, check out this page on Outline.
📚 Branch reading group
Save the date for our 3rd Branch Magazine Reading Group! Volunteers Poppe and Gaël invite you Thursday, Feb 16th for fruitful discussions and good vibes. Register here and vote for the article that will be discussed in this post on Slack.
#️⃣ Slack channel highlights
#greener-infra: A few weeks ago Graham noticed how some website analytics services use data transferred, and others use total data size. Does anyone know of any research on energy usage for decompressing data at the client end? Share your thoughts in the thread.
#greener-webdev: Thibaud looked for good resources on how to decide which emissions of a given site to track against your organisation, or suppliers, or individual users of the site. Lots of good conversation going on in the thread.
#climate-careers: Lauri is planning to shift into a product management role in climate tech and is looking for some guidance. Find more details and offer your advice in the thread.
✋ Looking for volunteers
Check out our Trello board for open roles and if you’ve got any ideas for projects, or feedback on existing projects, please let us know in our #community-feedback channel!
📆 Upcoming CAT events
If you're looking at organising event in your part of the world, you can ask for help in #events. There's a CAT event support kit, sample deck and so on to help.
☕ CAT Coffee (eastern): Asks & Offers Thu, Feb 9 • GMT 8am | CET 9am | IST 1:30pm | CT/SGT 4pm | AEST 7pm | NZST 9pm
📚 Branch Magazine Reading GroupThu, Feb 16 • PT 9am | ET 12pm | GMT 5pm | CET 6pm | IST 9:30pm
☕ CAT Coffee (western) Thu, Feb 23 • PT 10am | ET 1pm | GMT 6pm | CET 7pm | IST 10:30pm
🍩 CAT Roulette - 30mins - whenever you find a time Join the #cat-roulette channel, pick your region and get matched with other CATs every other week! It's a nice way to get to know other CATs, and you can start and stop at any time.
🎬 CAT videos
CAT videos, geddit? 10-15 minute videos providing accessible explainers to topics related to climate.
The Troll Army of Big Oil | Climate Town
Rollie Williams of Climate Town dives into the murky world of fossil fuel astroturfing.
📆 CAT Submitted Events
Want an event listed here? Use this event listing form to submit the details so we can add it in the newsletter.
Tue Feb 07 2023 - State of Open Con 23
The UK’s first conference on Open tech. We have over 100 confirmed speaker, including Jimmy Wales the cofounder of Wikipedia and Thomas Dohmke the CEO of GitHub. All tracks feature content on sustainability, we also have an unconference and a sub conference with sustain oss!
Fri Feb 17 2023 - Plant Futures Initiative x Terra.do Job Fair
Learn about companies who will propel the transition to a sustainable future of plant-centric food systems.
Tue Feb 14 2023 - Open source tools for sustainable software - measurement of energy consumption
At the next Green Software Development Karlsruhe meet up, everything revolves around measuring and monitoring the energy consumption of applications. Arne Tarara gives us insights into projects and tools to measure the energy consumption of software.
Mon Feb 13 2023 - The Digital Collage workshop
The Digital Collage is a 3h playful and collaborative online workshop. The aim of the workshop is to raise awareness and train participants on the environmental issues of digital technologies. The workshop also aims to outline solutions for more sustainability in Tech.
Thu Feb 09 2023 - Working in Sustainable Technology: Solar Energy
This month we're joined by two people with different solutions for harnessing the sun's rays: Vincent Alder from Smart Reflectors, and Ross Kent from Qcells Europe. Learn more about solar innovation and bring your own questions to the breakout rooms.
Mon Mar 20 2023 - OPF Academy
We need more people working on climate and we need them now. OPF Academy is led by climate experts to immediately level-up your climate and sustainability skills and apply them to impactful projects all over the world. Apply to build your climate expertise in 6 weeks!
🎤 Podcasts
The latest climate-related podcast episodes. Don't forget, if you're looking around, there's a list of podcasts maintained by CATs
Climate One: Blue Carbon: Sinking it in The Sea
When most of us think about using nature to remove carbon dioxide from the air, we think of trees. Yet blue carbon, a new name for storing carbon dioxide in coastal and marine ecosystems where it can no longer trap heat in our atmosphere, may have even greater potential.
Green I/O #11 - Elin Hauge and Héloïse Nonne - How to tackle AI true environmental cost?
Elin Hauge and Heloise Nonne never met before but still they have a lot in common. Same huge experience in AI and Data management and same despise for buzzwords and lazy short-cutting thinking. A candid discussion where you can expect metaverse buzz being slashed and rule of three providing more answers than deep learning.
Jonathan Strauss, Climate Draft
Today's guest is Jonathan Strauss, co-founder and CEO of Climate Draft, whose mission is to expose more people to the inspiring, impactful, and lucrative opportunities at venture-backed startups focused on decarbonizing the global economy.
Catalyst with Shayle Khan: Mailbag episode! Biotech, layoffs, battery recycling and more
In this “ask me anything” episode, Shayle Kann answers the questions you sent in.
📰 News Highlights
Clue to rising sea levels lies in DNA of 4m-year-old octopus, scientists say
Genes of Turquet’s octopus hold memories of melting of previous Antarctic ice sheet, raising fears of what another thawing could bring
Nigerian communities file damages claim against Shell in London court
More than 11,000 Nigerians from the oil-producing Niger Delta have filed a compensation claim against Shell at the London High Court, the latest step in a case that will test whether multinationals can be held to account for the actions of overseas subsidiaries.
Wind and solar were EU’s top electricity source in 2022 for first time ever
Wind and solar supplied more of the EU’s electricity than any other power source for the first time ever in 2022, accoriding to new analysis from NOG Ember Climate.
Google let Daily Wire advertise on ‘climate change is a hoax’ searches
A media outlet founded by conservative influencer Ben Shapiro paid Google to advertise on search pages questioning whether the climate crisis is real, according to new research from a disinformation watchdog group, even after announcing a new policy in October 2021 prohibiting ads that promote climate crisis denial.
In Brazil, Forests Returned to Indigenous Hands See Recovery, Study Finds
Granted formal rights to their ancestral lands in Brazil’s Atlantic Forest, Indigenous people have stemmed forest loss and improved tree cover, a new study finds.
Funding
Climate Subak accellerator programme - £10k / AUD 15k grant - closes March 17th
Our 3 month programme helps founders learn how to run an effective and impactful climate not-for-profit. Our unique four pillar curriculum focuses on the business fundamentals start-ups need to scale. You will access tuition from best-in-class mentors and advisors, work alongside Subak’s in-house subject matter experts, and become part of a global network of data-led climate innovators.
💼 Jobs
Remember only jobs listing salary ranges are listed here - to get your job listed, you need to list a salary range. Folks can still look in the #jobs channel.
Climate Team - Co-Founder / Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) - Equity till funded, then A$100,000+ - Permanent - Flexible - remote ok
Climate Team is looking for a Co-Founder / Chief Marketing Officer (CMO). Please see the LinkedIn link for a full description. Climate Team is a revolutionary platform for the climate solutions community that will make it easier to get started and grow as a climate founder, freelancer, investor, or even an enthusiast looking for his or her place in the ecosystem. Comprising marketplace, capital raising, community and productivity components, it will improve the efficiency of the investment market for climate tech by leveraging network effects and artificial intelligence (AI) / machine learning (ML).
Climate Interactive - Communications Coordinator - $45,000-$60,000 and benefits - Permanent - Totally remote
The Communications Coordinator will be responsible for promoting, and expanding engagement with, Climate Interactive’s tools and events. This position would be a good fit for someone highly motivated to use their diverse communications and marketing capabilities to make a difference worldwide on climate change.
BlueConduit - Data Scientist - ~$100k - Permanent - Totally remote
As data scientists at BlueConduit, we use machine learning models, working with geospatial data from a variety of data sources, to predict health hazards in infrastructure. Our founding team members were first to build models to predict whether water pipes were made of lead in Flint. And we’ve expanded that to serve cities throughout North America, on both a for-profit and charitable basis. We are passionate about using data science for social good and improving equity.
Furbnow - Multiple - £55k-£70k - Permanent - Flexible - remote ok
Furbnow is scaling up home retrofits in the UK. We're making houses lower carbon, cheaper to heat, and more comfortable!
Hiring for: Head of Growth - https://smrtr.io/cP_sR
Full stack software engineer (python / ts) - https://smrtr.io/cMwnW
Foresight Management - Senior Project Engineer - Buildings - $85000 to $110000 - Permanent - Flexible - remote ok
Foresight Management exists to champion energy management, accelerate sustainability, and increase profitability for our customers. The Senior Project Engineer will manage teams, provide technical expertise, and generally support the Building Performance team on all aspects of our engineering support services. As our contracts are varied in scope, the candidate will need to coordinate and organize success across multiple disciplines and scopes including but not limited to commissioning, energy modeling, daylight analysis, energy audits, retro-commissioning, healthy building audits, compressed air leak studies, air testing, infrared scanning, peak demand studies, steam trap studies, and utility rebate coordination.
Circularise - Project Manager (Circularity/Sustainability) - 50k-55k Euros - Permanent
Circularise is a supply chain traceability start-up founded in The Netherlands in 2016. We believe that end-to-end traceability holds the key to overcoming major challenges that society faces in areas such as Circular Economy, Environmental Pollution and Carbon Emissions. Therefore, it’s our mission to bring traceability to global supply chains and to accelerate world’s transition to a Circular Economy.
Singularity Energy - Backend Software Engineer - $110k – $140k, 0.05% – 0.25% equity - Permanent - Flexible - remote ok
We're looking for a backend engineer to own and implement new data and dashboard products, and to continue scaling and improving our backend data infrastructure. You’ll have input and responsibility over our entire codebase. You’ll be working on a wide range of tasks including: scaling our data processing pipeline, refining ML models, integrating with hardware to optimize device usage, and architecting new products and infrastructure from the ground up.
Monthly CAT Thank you
📋 For adding knowledge to Outline: Just @Sandra this time! If you see something that looks like it’s worth capturing in the long run — please capture it on Outline.
💰 For supporting us financially on Open Collective: @Mike Gifford (CivicActions) @Michelle Barker @fershad @Todd Zmijewski @Michael Napper @Luke Watts (CET) @Nicola Bonotto @Chris Pointon @James Crowley @Kasia @Jeff Burka @asim @HeatherB @Nic Wistreich @Aaron Rackley
❤️ For volunteering within the community: @Sigi @Siddharth @Siôn @Ismael Velasco @Matt Sirkis @Gaël Duez @Poppe Guthrie @Brett Duboff @Cary Kloster @Elisa @Evan Hahn @Alja IsakovićFor volunteering on our cross-community #climate-justice programs: @Marwa Eltaib @Lisa Bjerke @Crystal Soo @veronica @Richard Kim @Yang Hong (she/her)
SPECIAL SHOUT-OUT volunteering anniversaries: @Hannah - 3 years! And @roundcrisis - 2 years!