đ CAT Newsletter #177 - 2023-07-02
CAT 177 - 2023-07-02
Hey CATs,
Welcome to issue 177 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 đ±
CAT Community News
#ïžâŁ Slack highlights
#films-books-media: Owen and Melissa talked about the film & book âHow to blow up a pipelineâ. Are you up for hosting a one-off CAT book club event for this book in the summer? Let us know in the thread
#food-agriculture: More conversations in this channel as of late! For example from Ivar who is curious about technology & AI in food systems change. Share your thoughts in the thread
#greener-marketing: Owne shared his experience on his company switching away Google Analytics. Check out the thread
#greener-webdev: Nat shared a summary post of last weeksâ conversation here.
Local conversations are happening and local events are being shared in #local-australia, #local-bristol, #local-chicago, #local-dk, #local-london, #local-new-york, and #local-oregon!
đ CAT events
â¶ïž Tue, Jul 4 · Watch Party: How Airships Could Overcome a Century of Failure
đ Wed, Jul 12 · #local-austria: Meetup in Vienna
đ Thu, Jul 20 · CAT Coffee (western-friendly): Networking
In August weâll be taking a break with our events. Weâll use the time to realign our programs and what we do with our Theory of Change and community needs. CAT volunteers will be working on this - if youâd like to be involved, let @Sandra know on Slack.
đ© Community networking
Our next #cat-roulette matches are going out on Fri, July 7! 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
Beyond Growth Conference - Johan Rockstrom â Prosperity and Equity within Planetary Boundaries
A 11 minute long talk by Professor Johan Rockströmm, a scientist on global sustainability issues researching planetary boundaries and the social/economic implications, for the Beyond Growth conference earlier this year. One of the most concise summaries of the science, the 9 planetary boundaries we need to stay in side to ensure a stable environmenrt for supporting life, and how conditions have changed over the last few decades.
â Looking for volunteers
đ Host a summer book club âą 5h (one-off)
If you want to not just read âHow to blow up a pipelineâ this summer but help host a one-off CAT book club event, let us know in this thread.
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.
Thu Jul 13 2023 - Time Shifting Business Processes - Carbon Aware BPM
Using the Camunda Carbon Reductor, we do Carbon Aware Process Execution. We try to make the business process more sustainable by optimizing runtimes. We use predictions about the grid intensity to shift subsequent tasks - all while taking into account existing SLAs.
Check# external-events in the CAT slack for more.
đ€ Podcasts
Greenio #21 Greening Software 101 with Anne Currie & Arne Tarara
Join GaĂ«l Duez to meet : Arne Tarara, Ceo of Green Coding Berlin in Berlin & Anne Currie in London, writer of several science fiction novels as well as the much looked forward OâReilly book âBuilding Green Softwareâ.
Catalyst with Shayle Khan: The fungus among us
More than a third of the worldâs current greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels go through underground networks of fungi, according to a new peer-reviewed study in Current Biology. But how permanent is this storage? And what can we do to support fungi as a nature-based climate solution? In this episode, Shayle talks to Heidi-Jayne Hawkins, lead author of the new paper and research director at Conservation South Africa.
Carbon Copy: For AI on the grid, itâs all about the data
Last week, we started the show with a simple question: What do we want from the artificial-intelligence systems that are advancing so rapidly? Inevitably, when we start grappling with that question, we have to talk about ethics and data quality. This week, we feature two conversations about the ethics and implementation of AI across the energy economy.
Environment Variables: One Year Round Up
Join us for a special episode of Environment Variables as we celebrate over a year of bringing you the best insights on Green Software! From open source's role in reducing software emissions to making green changes in organizations, carbon-aware computing, and more, we revisit the most captivating moments from our top 10 most popular episodes
Ep124: Damilola Ogunbiyi "Annual Update: Sustainable Energy for All"
Todayâs guest on Cleaning Up is Damilola Ogunbiyi. Damilola is CEO of Sustainable Energy for All, the UN partner organization dedicated to achieving Sustainable Development Goal 7 (SDG7) â access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all by 2030.
Zero: World leaders met in Paris to unlock trillions in climate finance. What did they achieve?
Last week, 50 world leaders met in Paris with the goal of moving trillions in climate finance to developing countries. What was achieved, and what is still left to do? Akshat Rathi was on the ground and gives Oscar Boyd his key takeaways.
The latest climate-related podcast episodes. Don't forget, if you're looking around, there's a list of podcasts maintained by CATs
đ° News Highlights
Bloomberg: New Carbon Offset Rules Aim to Clean Up Company Climate Claims
Companies that buy carbon offsets from the voluntary market to counterbalance their greenhouse gas emissions now have guidelines to inform what they can and canât claim about purchased credits. The rules, published Wednesday by the Voluntary Carbon Markets Integrity Initiative (VCMI), aim to tighten climate claims companies make, in the face of sham claims, abuse and illusory credits. For more, see this paper about Microsoft and the Denmark claiming credits for the same tonnes of carbon removal from carbon capture and storage plant.
Just Food: NestlĂ© to walk away from âcarbon neutralâ claims
NestlĂ© is to stop using carbon offsets and withdraw its pledges to make certain brands âcarbon neutralâ. The worldâs largest food maker, which in recent years has announced âcarbon neutralâ targets for brands including KitKat and Nespresso coffee, said it would instead invest in cutting its greenhouse-gas emissions.
Science.org: AI model GPT-3 (dis)informs us better than humans
From the abstract: The results of our preregistered study, including 697 participants, show that GPT-3 is a double-edge sword: In comparison with humans, it can produce accurate information that is easier to understand, but it can also produce more compelling disinformation. We also show that humans cannot distinguish between tweets generated by GPT-3 and written by real Twitter users. Yikes.
London School of Economics: New figures show rise in âclimate-washingâ litigation against companies
'Climate-washingâ litigation against companies has increased in many countries, according to an analysis published by the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science. The report âGlobal trends in climate change litigation: 2023 snapshotâ shows that 26 âclimate-washingâ cases were filed in 2022, compared with fewer than 10 in 2020.
Heatmap: The (US) East Coastâs Wildfire Smoke Is On Par With the Westâs Worst Days
An interview with Marshall Burke, an economist who specializes in climate change and an associate professor at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. Key quote: "None of the existing monetized economic costs of climate change â like when we come up with the social cost of carbon or any of that stuff â wildfires are not in there at all. So this is fully un-costed in all the sort of headline climate-change cost numbers that we have."
Bloomberg: Berlin Risks Water Shortages in Fallout From Germanyâs Coal Exit
An unintended consequence of climate reform means the Spree River may get 75% less water. The Spree River running through Berlin provides it with drinking water and used to receive groundwater pumped up to enable lignite mining upstream. Now that ends, it'll have much less water.
IEEE Spectrum: The rise of open source power modelling for greener grids
Open standards in energy planning will make power and utility grids more resilient to a changing climate, and transparency may be the only way to plan a robust and sustainable grid for tomorrow that taxpayers and communities will get behind today.
Heatmap: âThe Largest Hajj in Historyâ Is Taking Place In Extreme Heat
The annual five- to six-day pilgrimage to Mecca was already one of the worldâs largest religious gatherings, but this year, the first since pandemic-era restrictions were lifted, more than 2.5 million people have reportedly descended on the holy site, undeterred by âextremeâ daily temperatures over 110 degrees. Because the dates of the annual Hajj are dictated by the lunar calendar, the pilgrimage season has fallen during Saudi Arabiaâs hottest months since 2017 and wonât move out of them until 2026.
The Register: Another redesign on the cards for iPhone as EU rules call for removable batteries
The European Parliament has voted yes to replaceable battery legislation, putting Apple on a path to a second redesign just over a year after USB-C charging ports were mandated in the bloc. The "portable battery" rule will come into play in 2027 at the earliest. and covers all appliances, mean that if you own the gadget, you should be able to remove and replace its battery yourself. More about the coming law
Storj claims edge in reducing carbon footprint for storage
Decentralized storage provider Storj has released a research paper claiming its technology can reduce the carbon footprint of storing a TB of data by 65-83 percent when compared against cloud hyperscalers and corporate datacenters. The claim is based on placing data on spare disk drive capacity in existing datacenters, capacity that is already powered, and distributed Reed-Solomon erasure coding instead of replicated drive copies, reducing tne required copies to safeguard data to the same extent. (Do you have experience using it? Chime in on this thread in slack)
đŒ 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.
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.
Vayda - Fractional Engineering Lead - $100-200/hr depending on experience - Contract - Flexible - remote ok
Hi everyone! We are hiring our first Eng Leader on a fractional basis to drive development of a data-centric product in the regenerative agriculture and climate space, building off of the company's direct knowledge and experience in regenerative farm operations. The company is a Series A startup backed directly by institutional investors (lead: Ontario Teachers Pension Plan).
David Energy - Customer Support Lead - $90,000 - $120,000 - Permanent - Flexible - remote ok
David Energy is a new kind of power company. One thatâs better for customers and for the planet. Weâre on a mission to transform the electrical grid with 24/7 clean, renewable energy â and give customers greater transparency and control while we do it. We are seeking a passionate and strategic Customer Support Lead to own our support experience for our residential customers. If you enjoy working on complex problems, excel at creating delightful experiences, and have a knack for elegant solutions and scalable processes, weâd love to connect with you.
Cercula - Software Developer - Up to ÂŁ55,000 - Permanent - Flexible - remote ok
Cercula is an award-winning construction tech & sustainability startup, working towards the decarbonisation of the construction industry. In short, we take a list of materials for a construction project, match each one in our database of materials carbon data, and produce a report on the building's whole-life carbon impact. We're looking for experienced developers to work on our API and databases, at the core of Cercula's business, as well as on our user-facing front-end and AWS deployment. Our stack is primarily TypeScript and Postgres on AWS (including serverless). If you are interested in social and climate change, and want to contribute to solving major environmental problems by decarbonising a high-impact industry, please reach out!
Elemental Excelerator - Portfolio Innovation Manager - $73,000 - $119,000 - Permanent - Flexible - remote ok
Elemental is looking for a highly collaborative, organized, and experienced individual to work with our Portfolio Team, assisting with the recruitment, diligence, and management of Elementalâs energy portfolio companies. For this position, we are looking for an individual who can design projects, manage deliverables and reporting, provide thought partnership on portfolio company strategy, and work with the Directors of Innovation across sectors and organization functions.
Elemental Excelerator - Creative Intern - $25 per hour - Internship - Totally remote
In this role, you will support the team on photo and creative asset organization, in addition to helping to brainstorm new ways to share the Elemental story! This is a highly creative and flexible team within the organization that will ultimately be expected to deliver creative assets for our organization.