đ CAT Newsletter #173 - 2023-06-04
Hey CATs,
Welcome to issue 173 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 đ đ đą
CAT Community News
đłď¸ Have your say in our member survey
If you havenât done so already, weâd love to hear from you through our twice-a-year member survey. This is your chance to share feedback about the community and suggest improvements. Please take 5-7mins and fill out the survey. Thank you!
đ CAT town hall
If you werenât able to make to our Town Hall you canâŚ
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Rewatch the recording in your own time here (passcode: CAT-TownHall23)
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Check out the presentation which includes all the links (links are also posted over in #5-cat-events)
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Join us for a Town Hall watch party & discussion on June 21st (pacific-rim-friendly)
đ CAT events
Our Town Hall took place last Wednesday! You can rewatch the recording in your own time here (passcode: CAT-TownHall23) or join us for a watch party đ
đą Tue, Jun 20 ¡ Town Hall watch party (pacific-rim)
đŠ Community networking
Our next #cat-roulette matches are going out on Fri, June 9! Join the channel, pick your region and Donut matches you with other channel members every other week! Itâs a great way to get to know other CATs and you can start and stop at any time.
đŹ CAT videos
CAT videos, geddit? 10-15 minute videos providing accessible explainers to topics related to climate.
DW Planet A - This is what’s REALLY holding back wind and solar ?
Building solar farms and wind parks is one thing. Plugging them into the grid is another. How does our power system need to change to cope with more renewables? A nice accessible backgrounder on how why there’s more to greening the electicity we use than just swapping out fossil generation with cleaner alternartives.
â Looking for volunteers
âď¸ Help enrich our blog: Do you have a climate action story to share? Or a how-to or explainer that we can repost? Or content planning experience? Contact @melissa or post in #cat-blog to get involved.
đ 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 Jun 20 2023 - Carbon Aware Computing - Design Principles & Patterns
Carbon Aware Computing is a building block to design systems CO2 optimized. In a project with UBS, the Carbon Aware SDK was developed with the goal to design the UBS Risk Compute Platform Carbon Aware and to report savings. (Talk is in German)
Check #events in the CAT slack for more.
đ¤Â Podcasts
The latest climate-related podcast episodes. Don’t forget, if you’re looking around, there’s a list of podcasts maintained by CATs
Environment Variables - Fact check: Colleen Josephson, Miguel Ponce de Leon & AI Optimization of the Environmental Impact of Software
Host Chris Adams is joined by Andri Johnston, Digital Sustainable Lead for Cambridge University Press and Assessment as they talk about using DIMPACT to calculate the carbon impact of digital publishing as well as news from the world of green software concerning one acronym; ESG and one new portmanteau; LightSwitchOps.
Catalyst with Shayle Khan: Will a copper shortage hinder the energy transition?
Copper is a key component of climatetech. How can we avoid a looming supply crunch?. In this episode, Shayle talks to CristĂłbal Undurraga, the CEO of copper mining technology company Ceibo. They talk about the causes of stagnating copper supply and the technologies that could help increase production.
Zero: The writer behind Love Actually wants to green your retirement fund
This week on Zero, Akshat Rathi asks Richard about how he went from writing for the screen to making your retirement money green, what can be done to stop greenwashing in the financial sector, and whether he’ll ever write a climate romcom.
Outrage and Optimism 202. No Matter What, We’re Going Too Slow
This week, Christiana, Tom and Paul debrief on Paulâs recent mini series and discuss the news that insurers are leaving the Net Zero Insurance Alliance after the ESG backlash in the U.S. There is a big week coming up, with the Bonn climate intersessionals in preparation for the COP28 in Dubai later in the year. Finally, they discuss the devastating news of heat waves in India and Asia, and the fact that the World Meteorological Organization has said that there is a 66% chance that the world will exceed the 1.5 °C threshold in at least one of the next five years.
đ° News Highlights
Green Software Foundation releases the 2023 State of Green Software
A new report that brings global insights and data from industry leaders and researchers to the forefront to reduce software’s harm to Earth and increase investment in decarbonizing software at scale.
Medium: A proposal for a Realtime Carbon Footprint Standard
Interesting piece by former AWS VP of Cloud and Sustainability Adrian Cockroft, on what an open standard for carbon reporting for cloud services, based on his own experiences in the field would ideally look like.
The Guardian: COP28 presidentâs team accused of Wikipedia âgreenwashingâ
The Cop28 president, Sultan Al Jaber, has been accused of attempting to âgreenwashâ his image after it emerged that members of his team had edited Wikipedia pages that highlighted his role as CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc).
World Economic Forum: Why China is set to significantly overachieve its 2030 climate goals
Recent policy developments are reflected in our latest Climate Action Tracker assessment of Chinaâs current targets, policies and climate action, published today, which shows its emissions are likely to increase in the short term, but peak by 2025 rather than 2030. Bloomberg New Energy Finance is forecasting that China is will install 154 GW of solar in 2023. For context, this is more than the total solar capacity ever built in the US at around 142 GW and not far off Europe’s figure of around 208 GW.
Associated Press: India pauses plans to add new coal plants for five years, bets on renewables, batteries
The government of India, the world’s most populous nation will not consider any proposals for new coal plants for the next five years and focus on growing its renewables sector, according to an updated national electricity plan released Wednesday evening.
ClimateTech VC: A spotlight on shoddy offsets
Recent shake-ups in the voluntary carbon market raise questions about the economics and quality of credits - Uncertainty about the integrity and security of nature- and renewables-based projects has prompted many organizations to move toward higher-quality carbon removal credits. See also Climatetech VC’s primer on voluntary carbon markets.
Euractiv: Commission rules out new private jet measures despite member state push
In the lead up to the Transport Council, Austria, France, and the Netherlands jointly penned a letter to EU climate chief Frans Timmermans and the Transport Commissioner arguing that tackling private jet emissions is a matter of climate justice. A report by the green NGO Transport & Environment found that private jets are 5 to 14 times more polluting than commercial planes on a per passenger basis
The Guardian: More than 1,500 arrested at Extinction Rebellion protest in The Hague
Several Dutch celebrities among protesters, including Game of Thrones actor Carice van Houten. Activists blocked a section of a motorway during the afternoon in protest against Dutch fossil fuel subsidies.
The Guardian: Seattle Amazon workers walkout in response to layoffs and office mandate
Employees complain about companyâs return-to-office policy and slow response to the climate crisis. In an annual statement to investors, Amazon said it aimed to deploy 100,000 electric delivery vehicles by 2030 and reach net-zero carbon by 2040. But walkout organizers contend the company must do more and commit to zero emissions by 2030.
Grist: The global plastics treaty can fight climate change â if it reduces plastic production
A new report says a 75 percent cut in plastics is needed to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. nonprofit advocacy group Beyond Plastics calculated that the US plastics industry is on track to produce more climate pollution per year than domestic coal-fired power plants by 2030.
Grist: Defend our Health and Bloomberg Philanthropies Beyond Petrochemicals campaign: Plastic bottles harm human health at every stage of their life cycle
Another new report Hidden Hazards: The Chemical Footprint of a Plastic Bottle reveals the health, environmental, and climate threats caused throughout the lifecycle of common plastic known as polyethylene terephthalate or PET - including independent testing suggesting that (yikes) virtually all plastic bottles leach chemicals into the beverages they hold.
Washington Post: Deltaâs carbon-neutral pledge is âgreenwashing,â California lawsuit says
Delta Air Lines should pay damages to customers for misrepresenting itself as a carbon-neutral airline in marketing campaigns and advertisements that encouraged consumers to pay higher prices, a class-action lawsuit says.
Inside Climate News: Joe Rogan Is Fueling Climate Misinformation on TikTok, Watchdogs Warn
A clip of celebrity podcaster Joe Rogan touting a conspiracy theory that links global warming to Earthâs magnetic field has gone viral on TikTok, despite the platformâs new policy prohibiting climate misinformation, a new report warns. Link to full report by Media Matters for America
WABE: Georgia peach crop decimated by bad weather, warming climate
horticulturists at the University of Georgia say roughly 90% of the Peach Stateâs crop has been destroyed by bad weather and a warming climate. The last time things were this bad was 1955, according to Lawton Pearson of Pearson Farm in Fort Valley, Georgia.
đźÂ 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. Wikirateâs 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 - ÂŁ34,387 to ÂŁ54,356 - 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 techâs 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 - âŹ40-60K, 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.
ICCT - Associate Researcher, Aviation, Berlin - 64K EUR - Permanent - Flexible
The ICCT seeks a highly motivated and committed Associate Researcher for the Aviation Program in Berlin, Germany. This position will support research to identify, refine, and promote policies to reduce the environmental impacts of commercial aviation.
TransitionZero - Software Engineer - ÂŁ45,000 to ÂŁ65,000 per annum (depending on experience level) - Permanent - Flexible - remote ok
We are seeking a talented junior or mid-level software engineer with a passion for sustainability, skills and experience writing back-end data services with Python, and a knowledge of Python development to build data handling scripts, API routes, data models, schemas, migrations, and containerised jobs and services. You will be working on The Future Energy Outlook, an open-source data and modelling platform that aims to make energy systems analysis auditable, accountable, and reproducible, and TransitionZero’s new flagship product.