🌍 CAT Newsletter #174 - 2023-06-11
Hey CATs,
Welcome to issue 174 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
🗳️ Let us know how we’re doing
If you haven’t done so already, we’d love to hear your feedback on CAT and ideas for improvements through our twice-a-year member survey (takes about 5-7mins to fill out). Thank you!
✏️ From the blog
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Melissa wrote up a summary of our Town Hall - rewatch the recording here (passcode: CAT-TownHall23)
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Sandra shared our May event round-up (#5-cat-events)
#️⃣ Slack highlights
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#2-global-dialogue: Clare brought up the wildfires happening in Canada right now and asked What impacts might you be seeing from either the wildfires or other fairly directly climate-related events in your areas? Share in the thread
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#greener-webdev: Channel host Caroline started a discussion on what developers do to decarbonize their software and shared a quote from the GSF’s latest ‘State of Green Software’ report. Join the convo
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#greener-infra: New channel hosts Tom and Aïda introduced themselves earlier this week and are discussing the lack of transparency on emission data from big cloud providers. What do you think? Have you successfully reported your cloud infra emissions in the past? Share you thoughts
📆 CAT events
🐱 Tue, Jun 20 · Town Hall watch party (pacific-rim)
▶️ Tue, Jul 4 · Watch Party: How Airships Could Overcome a Century of Failure
👋 Thu, Jul 20 · CAT Coffee (western-friendly): Networking
🍩 Community networking
Our next #cat-roulette matches are going out on Fri, June 23! 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.
Bloomberg Originals - Can Uber Go All-Electric
Uber Technologies wants to cut emissions to zero by converting its entire fleet of cars to electric by 2040. But to do so, the ride-hailing giant will need support from both drivers and riders. CEO Dara Khosrowshahi explains the company’s new sustainability features to Bloomberg’s Emily Chang.
✋ Looking for volunteers
✍️ 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.
📆 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.
🎤 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 - The Week in Green Software: Open Source Innovations with Tom Greenwood
The Week in Green Software: Open Source Innovations with Tom Greenwood. They discuss insights from The State of Green Software report, the cost reduction strategy of Amazon’s Prime Video, Atlassian’s sustainability program, Wholegrain Digital’s Employee Activism Policy, and heating swimming pools with servers.
Catalyst with Shayle Khan: The carbon market’s quality problem?
Only a small fraction of the carbon credits on voluntary markets actually do what they say they do. Could better credit-rating systems help? In this episode, Shayle talks to Allister Furey, co-founder and CEO of Sylvera, a company that rates the quality of credits in a manner akin to what agencies like Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s do for bonds.
Zero: How wildfire smoke and air pollution affect your health
A hotter planet is also a smokier one, as residents of New York City are finding out this week. As the intensity and size of wildfires grows, more and more people are being exposed to dangerously unhealthy air. Just how dangerous? Oscar Boyd asks Akshat Rathi to explain the health effects of exposure to intense air pollution.
Outrage and Optimism 203. Tomfoolery! Red Herrings!
With anti-ESG action hitting the headlines across the ‘puddle’ (as Christiana would say), our hosts begin this week by walking us through the origins of the anti-ESG movement which we covered in our Season 6 episode: ESG: Facts are not Political, before moving us on to explore the current spate of legal cases being brought by certain Republican groups, designed to intimidate members of net zero alliances. We were very fortunate to speak to Maurits Dolmans, attorney and partner of Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP, and a rising star of the Net Zero Lawyers Alliance.
📰 News Highlights
AI chatbots lose money every time you use them. That is a problem.
Key quotes from the piece: “Dylan Patel, chief analyst at the semiconductor research firm SemiAnalysis, estimated that a single chat with ChatGPT could cost up to 1,000 times as much as a simple Google search.” AlsoIn a recent report on artificial intelligence, the Biden administration pinpointed the computational costs of generative AI as a national concern. The White House wrote that the technology is expected to “dramatically increase computational demands and the associated environmental impacts,” and that there’s an “urgent need” to design more sustainable systems.
Brazil’s Lula unveils plan to stop deforestation in Amazon by 2030
BRASILIA, June 5 (Reuters) - Brazil’s government on Monday unveiled how it plans to meet a pledge to eliminate deforestation in the Amazon by 2030, using strengthened law enforcement against environmental crimes and other measures in the world’s largest tropical rainforest.
Notes on climate work, from the Chief Design Officer of the design council, focussing on climate
It was my last day at Design Council on Friday so I’m taking the opportunity to reflect on the past 5 years, taking on work across renewable energy, sustainable finance, circular economy, climate leadership in the world of design and running a summer residency.
Yellow Dot Studios’ Staci Roberts-Steele Believes Comedy Can Save Our Planet
An interview with Staci Roberts-Steele, known for “Chevon Ad” - (warning - somewhat sweary and NSFW), on the launch the non-profit studio Yellow Dot Studios with Adam McKay (known for Don’t Look up, the Big Short and more). Yellow Dot Studios was set up with the intent of creating videos and other materials that will raise awareness of climate change and other issues, often told with comedy.
Tesla’s Model 3 cheaper than Toyota’s Camry in California with tax benefits
SAN FRANCISCO/WASHINGTON, June 6 (Reuters) - Tesla Inc’s rapid adjustment of its battery supply chain means all of its Model 3 vehicles qualify for federal U.S. credits that, along with other tax breaks, could lower its price to less than a Toyota Camry. After Federal and State subsidies in California, the EV would come in at around $25,240. Toyota’s Camry is listed at $26,320 and higher.
The Global Stocktake, and introducing Climate Policty Radar’s Global Stocktake Explorer
The inaugural Global Stocktake conducted by the United Nations on Climate Change presents a crucial opportunity for the international community to assess the overall progress made in implementing the Paris Agreement. To address this challenge, Climate Policy Radar has introduced the Global Stocktake Explorer, a free tool that helps people research documents submitted to the UNFCCC - all 1,600+ documents / 170,000 pages in total, automatially translated from any language to English, and with key themes identified across the dataset. More on the Global Stocktake and why it’s important
Hidden carbon: Fungi and their ‘necromass’ absorb one-third of the carbon emitted by burning fossil fuels every year
Now, new research shows this single group of fungi may quietly be playing a bigger role in storing carbon than we thought. How much bigger? These microscopic filaments take up the equivalent of more than a third (36%) of the world’s annual carbon emissions from fossil fuels – every year.
Wind and solar overtake fossil generation in the EU
New data from energy think tank Ember shows that wind and solar produced more EU electricity than fossil fuels in May, for the first full month on record. Almost a third of the EU’s electricity in May was generated from wind and solar (31%, 59 TWh), while fossil fuels generated a record low of 27% (53 TWh).
💼 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.
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 - £45,000 to £65,000 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.