🌍 CAT Newsletter #170 - 2023-05-14
Hey CATs,
Welcome to issue 170 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.
Remember you can unsubscribe from this newsletter at any time - the link is at the bottom.
Stay safe & healthy 😌 💚 🐱
CAT Community News
CAT town hall
Our town hall is about 2 weeks away! This is an opportunity to…
🔈 Hear from the organisers about what is happening within CAT
❓ Ask questions and share feedback
👐 Learn more about volunteering
We will also share a Sli.do prior to the event to gather questions in advance! Register on Meetup and please feel free to reach out to any of the organisers with questions.
️⃣ Slack highlights
A few of our #local channels have seen some activity this week — among them #local-bristol, #local-india, and #local-netherlands. If you want to meet up with fellow CATs in person or if you have something local to share, find your #local channel and get a conversation started!
📆 Upcoming CAT events
☕ Thu, May 19 · CAT Coffee: Networking
🐱 Wed, May 24 · CAT Town Hall ’22-23 (keep an eye out on #7-cat-community-feedback for async discussions)
🐱 Thu, Jun 1 · Town Hall watch party (eastern)
▶️ Fri, Jun 2 · Watch Party: What is ocean acidification?
🐱 Tue, Jun 20 · Town Hall watch party (pacific-rim)
🍩 Community networking
Our next #cat-roulette matches are going out on Fri, May 26! Join the channel, pick your region and Donut matches you with other channel members every other week! It’s a great 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.
Too HOT and HUMID to Live: Extreme Wet Bulb Events Are on the Rise
As climate change continues warming the planet, a new and invisible killer is emerging: extreme wet bulb temperatures. This refers to a potentially lethal combination of heat and humidity that, until now, have appeared somewhat infrequently around the world. But models predict that they are likely to become an increasingly big problem in the coming years. In this episode we explore the intersection between climate science and meteorology to tell you where in the world is most at risk of these increasingly dangerous conditions.
✋ Looking for volunteers
#️⃣ #greener-webdev channel host • 30mins-1hr / week
Keep our #greener-webdev channel welcome, active, and safe. You can also work on documenting knowledge from this channel on our Outline page or encourage other members to do so.
#️⃣ #greener-infra channel host • 30mins-1hr / week
Keep our #greener-infra channel welcome, active, and safe. You can also work on documenting knowledge from this channel on our Outline page or encourage other members to do so.
📆 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 May 16 2023 - Sustainable Kubernetes - Scale up, Scale down, Scale to Zero
Kubernetes offers the possibility of automatically scaling applications. Sustainability thinks ahead - how can we carry out the scaling under ecological aspects and switch them off. And the challenge is to turn the application back. Zero becomes Hero.
Mon May 22 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.
Tue May 30 2023 - Inventive ways to make plastics more sustainable
Green Tech South West welcomes Neil Morris from Kelpi and Keven Chappell from Pinweld to tell us about their incredible work to transform the ways we use and view plastics.
Check #events in the CAT slack for more.
🎤 Podcasts
The latest climate-related podcast episodes. Don't forget, if you're looking around, there's a list of podcasts maintained by CATs
Biden’s climate bill is changing climate tech, and our daily lives
This week we are sharing an episode of the Bloomberg podcast The Big Take that looks at where all the money in U.S. President Biden's signature climate bill has gone. Bloomberg climate reporter Eric Roston and senior reporter Akshat Rathi talk with Big Take host Wes Kosova about how climate tech is no longer a corner of the economy–it’s fast becoming the economy.
The great Bitcoin energy debate
Depending on who you talk to, Bitcoin mines are either great for the grid or the worst thing that’s ever happened to it. In this episode, Shayle talks to Ben Hertz-Shargel, global head of grid edge at Wood Mackenzie. The New York Times recently reported on the role of Bitcoin mining on the grid, and Ben was part of a team that contributed to the report.
My Climate Journey: Lucy Piper, WorkforClimate
WorkForClimate is a not-for-profit that provides individual employees with clear step-by-step playbooks to help influence and accelerate a company's decarbonization initiatives. WorkForClimate identified four key areas of change that employees can impact: energy, emissions, money, and influence. Lucy and Cody chat about each of these, why they matter, and some of the steps that WorkForClimate recommends employees take to maximize their collective influence
The Week in Green Software: IaaS, PaaS, SaaS!
Host Chris Adams is joined by Max Schulze from the SDIA (The Sustainable Digital Alliance) and they discuss the worlds of IaaS, PaaS and Saas, Chris and Max cover stories from the Cloud Native Computing Foundation , Google's leaked "we have no moat around AI" paper, and upcoming events in the Green Software community.
📰 News Highlights
AWS under fire for delays in delivering Scope 3 GHG emissions data to enterprises and governments
With regulator scrutiny of their environmental footprint on the rise, AWS customers are growing increasingly concerned about the public cloud giant’s slow progress in making its Scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions data freely available to users.
Wind is main source of UK electricity for first time
Wind turbines have generated more electricity than gas for the first time in the UK. In the first three months of this year a third of the country's electricity came from wind farms, research from Imperial College London has shown. National Grid has also confirmed that April saw a record period of solar energy generation.
What impact does climate change have on coffee?
In the second of a new series explaining how key commodities are affected by and contribute to climate change, Carbon Brief looks at coffee – from how it is grown in the world’s bean belt to where it is roasted, traded and consumed – with a special focus on Colombia and Ethiopia. Fascinating long read on what's happening to bean so many of us rely on.
The Register: Microsoft signs up to buy electricity produced by fusion, perhaps in 2028
Fusion upstart Helion Energy has named Microsoft as its first customer, and claims the software giant should be able to use electricity made by mashing together helium atoms from Helion reckons the plant from which Microsoft is expected to draw power "will target power generation of 50MW." The Register is aware of individual datacenters that consume more energy. And Microsoft has dozens of them.
Measure & Improve Your Site's Footprint with Carbon Control from Catchpoint WebPageTest
Catchpoint, one of the key contirbutors to WebPageTest, has announced new features for measuring a website's Carbon Footprint. "Measuring carbon footprint has been the most requested and discussed issue in our tracker, and for good reasons: the web community is increasingly concerned about reducing our contributions to climate change, and companies will increasingly be held accountable for monitoring and reducing their emissions."
New York state just approved publicly owned renewables
The new Build Public Renewables Act, passed as part of New York’s annual budget, is a culmination of four years of organizing by climate and community organizations, and has been heralded as a major win by energy-democracy, environmental-justice and labor groups.
New study reveals fine detail on location and scale of mining sites worldwide
A new study published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment may have just given a big boost to anyone looking for a clear picture of what those supply chains look like at their point of origin. The data set, which includes large-scale mining operations as well as informal artisanal sites, is one of the most detailed ever created. And to make sure that others can build off their work, the study’s authors have made it available to the public for free.
How Iceland sold the same Green Electricity twice
European renewable energy certificate led to double counting of the same electricity from Iceland. Certificate exports have now been suspended. But the problem is not restricted to Iceland.
'A new history': Brazil's Lula decrees six Indigenous reserves
Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Friday decreed six new Indigenous reserves, including a vast Amazon territory, after a freeze in such expansion under his far-right predecessor Jair Bolsonaro. Under the decrees, Indigenous people are guaranteed exclusive use of natural resources on these lands, viewed by scientists as a bulwark against Amazon deforestation -- a major challenge in the fight against climate change.
💼 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 Arc - DevOps / API Developer - GBP 50k - 70k - Permanent - Flexible - remote ok
Climate Arc is building an open data platform to help shifting global finance towards responsible companies. We're currently looking for someone to help building foundational elements of our platform, including DevOps, automation, monitoring and well as develop API layer exposing our data assets externally.
Wikirate International - Full-stack developer - 65,000 EUR - Permanent - Flexible - remote ok
We are looking for a full-stack developer who can work within a distributed team on diverse technical challenges. Wikirate’s code, all of which is open source, is primarily written in Ruby and CoffeeScript/JavaScript and is tested using RSpec and Cypress (and, to a lesser extent, Cucumber). The developer will be expected to write automated tests for all new code. All code contributions are team-reviewed as pull requests on GitHub.
Centre for Sustainable Energy - Software engineer - £34,387 to £54,356 - Permanent - Flexible - remote ok
As a Software Engineer, you will collaborate with CSE colleagues in the Research and Analysis team, across CSE and external partners on the following tasks: Creating innovative software to answer climate change related questions. Designing, planning, developing and testing new software. Supporting and extending existing applications. Using software to help colleagues undertake tasks including statistical and spatial analysis and data management.
Elemental Excelerator - Senior Partnerships Operations Analyst - $68,200 - $106,600 - Permanent - Onsite only
This role will be responsible for project managing both our efforts in building a novel coalition to bridge climate tech’s scale gap and our corporate innovation challenges. The role may also be tasked with supporting cross-functional projects within the greater team to realize new opportunities. If you have a passion for process optimization, organization, and relationship building, consider applying.
Electricity Maps - Chief Operating Officer - 80,000 DKK (around 107k EUR) - Permanent
Electricity Maps is looking for an experienced COO with the mission of bringing the company from 1+ to 10M+ revenue by owning P&L and day-to-day activities, thus creating a space for the CEO to focus on external evangelisation, key strategic relationships as well as product innovation
Leaders for Climate Action - Sustainability Program Manager - €40-60K, commensurate with experience - Contract - Flexible - remote ok
As the Sustainability Program Manager at Leaders for Climate Action (LFCA), you will be responsible for designing and delivering high-quality educational formats that enable practitioners to drive climate action within their organizations. This role can either be located in Berlin or be fully remote.