July 23, 2023

🌍 CAT Newsletter #180 - 2023-07-22

CAT 180 - 2023-07-22

Hey CATs,

Welcome to issue 180 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

#️⃣ Slack highlights

• #greener-data-ai: Chris is asking for options for understanding the environmental impact of AI & ML tools - help him out. And Ronan is asking whether there’s data scientists working in a non-climate tech role who managed to work on a climate related project at work - share your experience.

• #greener-webdev: Amy asked if anyone researched if web design and development could learn anything from biomimicry - join the chat.

• #random: Laura shared a project that extracts semantic info from IPCC reports - what do you think?

📆 CAT events

On Thursday CAT volunteer Clare hosted an online cross-continental networking session for CATs using the platform Gatheround again!

Upcoming events

We snuck in one last collaborative event before our August summer break:

💰 Thu, Jul 27 · Climate investing & employee action | Add to Google Calendar

🍩 Community networking

#cat-roulette will take a summer break followed by a weeding out of inactive members in August. More info the #cat-roulette channel.

🎬 CAT videos

Planet A: What if we stopped making so much stuff?

A growing portion of climate activists and policy makers argue that reducing global economic activity - or degrowth - is the only way to save the planet. But critics say increasing economic growth ensures human well-being. Who’s right?

CAT videos, geddit? 10-15 minute videos providing accessible explainers to topics related to climate.

✋ Looking for volunteers

📚 Host a summer book club • 5h (one-off)

If you want to not just read ‘How to blow up a pipeline’ this summer but help host a one-off CAT book club event, let us know in this thread.

📆 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.

Wed Jul 26 2023 - Wikirate x Green Web Foundation - Data Contributors Training

CHRIS - MAKE A BLOG POST OUTLINING THIS IN MORE DETAIL

Last week we learned that in the last 18 months tech giants spent more than twice as much cash buying their own shares as it would cost to buy out all the coal plants on earth and replace then with green energy. This week we're running a training session to learn to use the open source platform, Wikirate, to create an open dataset tracking which companies onlnie have credible Net-Zero Targets. Learn about open data, how to use open source tools, and meet fellow travellers using the open as a lever for change.

Check #external-events in the CAT slack for more.

🎤 Podcasts

The Week in Green Software: Open Data with Fershad Irani

In this episode of Environment Variables Chris Adams is joined by Fershad Irani, an independent web sustainability consultant and maintainer of CO2.js. They cover a massive new release of hourly open data on the carbon intensity of electricity, the wonders of HotCarbon, new projects from the Cloud Native Computing Foundation and the new Real Time Carbon Standard from the Green Software Foundation.

Carbon Copy: What’s the next big trend in clean energy?

This week, we feature a conversation between journalist David Roberts and futurist Ramez Naam about what’s ahead for tech trends — from renewables and batteries to grid management, from space-based solar power to geoengineering.

Catalyst with Shayle Khan: Taking a closer look at carbon capture

Carbon capture and storage is a controversial tool in the energy transition. We don’t want to use it, but we probably have to. In this episode, Shayle talks to Emily Grubert, associate professor of sustainable energy policy at the University of Notre Dame, on her research into the field.

GreenIO #22: Impact podcasters in Tech with Perrine Tanguy and Tristan Nitot

A special (northern hemisphere) summer one! An uncut, raw, spontaneous episode where Perrine, Tristan and Gaël discuss about podcasting in Sustainability, in Tech and in general!

Outrage and Optimisim - 209. Powered by Nature

With Tom away, Christiana and Paul discuss the extreme and deadly heat waves facing multiple continents, news which is dominating the headlines. They review the details of the recently published Letter to Parties from the incoming COP president, which sets out his vision for what he thinks needs to be accomplished at COP28 later in the year. Also, they talk about the hard won law just passed by the European Parliament to restore degraded natural ecosystems.

The latest climate-related podcast episodes. Don't forget, if you're looking around, there's a list of podcasts maintained by CATs

📰 News Highlights

The Carbon Brief: Media reaction - Extreme weather hits world’s seven continents in July 2023

From Africa to Antarctica, all seven of Earth’s continents have experienced extraordinary extreme weather events this month, and the start of July saw Earth experience its hottest week on record. Extreme weather events across the globe this month have already featured on more than 114 frontpages in at least 84 newspapers, published across 32 countries, Carbon Brief analysis. Read for a round up globally.

The Register: Microsoft’s Dublin DC power plant gets the, er, green light

Unable to secure a steady supply of power from Ireland's national power grid, Microsoft has elected to build its own power plant to keep its €900 million datacenter development outside Dublin up and running. Earlier this month, the software giant received approval to power its facilities using its own private gas-powered power plant located alongside its datacenters in Dublin's Grange Castle Business Park. The plant is reportedly capable of generating 170 megawatts of power from 22 generators at a cost of roughly €100 million to build.

Heatmap: Maybe Wooden Skyscrapers Aren’t As Climate-Friendly As We Think

New research casts doubt on a popular climate solution. A lengthy report from the nonprofit World Resources Institute released Thursday warns of a “growing land squeeze” where increasing demand for food, housing, and wood is threatening the world’s prospects for tackling climate change. Adding to the competition, the authors argue, is something that’s been broadly advertised as a climate solution — the use of mass timber in construction.

Grist: After years of criticism, Amazon appears to be cutting down on plastics

After years of criticism for its outsize use of plastic, the world’s largest retailer appears to be making progress to reduce its plastic footprint. Amazon’s 2022 sustainability report is the first to include a quantitative estimate of the company’s single-use plastics footprint; previously, the company’s only other estimate came from a blog post last December. [Editor's note: this is also the first year Amazon's total reported emissions have reduced since reporting started.]

Science.org: Hidden hydrogen Does Earth hold vast stores of a renewable, carbon-free fuel?

The enthusiasm for natural hydrogen comes as interest in hydrogen as a clean, carbon-free fuel is surging. Governments are pushing it as a way to fight global warming, efforts that were galvanized when Russia invaded Ukraine last year and triggered a hasty search, especially in Europe, for alternatives to Russian natural gas. At the moment, all commercial hydrogen has to be manufactured, either in a polluting way, by using fossil fuels, or in an expensive way, by using renewable electricity.

CNBC: Arnold Schwarzenegger: ‘No one gives a s--- about’ climate change — this is what it should be called instead

Arnold Schwarzenegger says the global effort to mitigate the effects of climate change is being crippled by its fundamental communication problem. “As long as they keep talking about global climate change, they are not gonna go anywhere. ... so my thing is, let’s go and rephrase this and communicate differently about it and really tell people — we’re talking about pollution. Pollution creates climate change, and pollution kills,” Schwarzenegger said.

Politifact: Red light on ‘greenwashing’? US regulatory agency takes fresh look at deceptive climate claims

For the first time in more than a decade, the Federal Trade Commission is reviewing its “Green Guides,” which offer companies direction on how to avoid making deceptive environmental claims in advertising or marketing. Environmental advocates are pushing the FTC to crack down on “greenwashing” — businesses’ attempts to portray themselves as more environmentally friendly than they are.

Z Network: Bosses Tried to Sack These Automotive Workers, So They Took Over Their Factory - Now they want to build bikes and solar panels.

On a Friday morning in July 2021, 422 employees at an automotive factory in Florence, Italy, were enjoying an unexpected day off, apparently gifted to them by their bosses, when they received an email explaining they had been fired en masse. After they found out that they were going to lose their jobs, the GKN workers had 75 days before redundancies came into effect to formulate a plan. “We found a way to go into the factory and we started what we call in Italy a ‘permanent assembly’. It’s the most legal way to say you’ve taken control of the factory,” - The Insorgiamo is now crowdfunding to buy back the factory to form a workers’ cooperative and transform their previous production from emission-enabling car parts to sustainable cargo bikes and solar panels, to future-proof their jobs and the planet.

Washington Post: Good news for climate comes from the world’s greatest user of coal

Opinion piece from Hannah Ritchie, lead researcher at OUr World in Data: "In a season of record temperatures, fires and floods, there’s a glimmer of hope that averting the worst of climate change might still be possible. China, the world’s top carbon emitter and greatest user of coal, is rolling out renewables at breakneck speed. This dizzying pace means China’s carbon dioxide emissions will peak years ahead of its 2030 target. And where one global power leads, others are compelled to follow."

New Republic: Is Big Oil Turning on Big Auto?

Exxon released an ad earlier this month that could signal a public rift between two industries that have spent a century working side by side. "Fossil fuel companies attacking E.V.s doesn’t mean automakers are suddenly climate heroes for simply running ads promoting their electric options, by any stretch of the imagination. According to statistics from ad data service Media Radar, auto majors are spending more than twice as much to advertise large electric trucks and SUVs as they are for smaller E.V.s."

Flying in Europe up to 30 times cheaper than train, says Greenpeace

Campaigners say cheap flights, made possible by tax breaks for airlines, are encouraging people to heat the planet - Europe’s cheap flights and pricey train tickets promote dirty forms of transport, campaigners say, with “outrageous” tax breaks encouraging people to heat the planet as they head on holiday. “In short: if you fly, you are subsidised; if you take the train, you are punished by higher prices – as well as the fact that the journey is often longer”.

💼 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 - £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.

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 that’s better for customers and for the planet. We’re on a mission to transform the electrical grid with 24/7 clean, renewable energy – 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, we’d love to connect with you.

Cercula - Software Developer - Up to £55,000 - 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 Elemental’s 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.

Supercritical - Multiple - Multiple salaries ranging from £40k - £150k + - Permanent - Flexible - remote ok

We're a climate tech company, helping software/service-based businesses to measure their carbon footprints, and remove their emissions from the atmosphere with carbon removal. We've just raised a €13m Series A with Lightspeed and have a truly amazing team working on our mission.

Expect - Senior full stack engineer - Salary & equity mix negotiable according to experience - Permanent - Totally remote

Expect are hiring a Senior full stack engineer to build the intelligence that powers Expect's climate action platform and enable simple, collaborative & profitable enterprise decarbonisation.

Overstory - Full-stack software engineer - 60-75k eur - Permanent - Totally remote

Full-stack software engineer role to create web appls and data visualizations - mostly of trees! Vegetation is the single greatest contributor to power outages and wildfires caused by our electric grid. Overstory provides utilities with visibility, risk analysis, and optimization recommendations for vegetation management, using machine learning and satellite imagery. Overstory is a flexible and diverse remote-first climate tech startup and this role would suit someone with experience with deep tech / remote sensing / cartography / GIS especially but these aren’t essential.

Revalu Impact AG (IT Partner: i-ways) - Multiple - 15 - 25 LPA - Permanent - Flexible - remote ok

Revalu Impact AG is an Indo-European start up with a focus on Sustainability in buildings- sector. As part of expanding our teams in India, we are partnering with our IT partner, I-WAYS to recruit multiple senior developers.

Revalu Impact AG (IT partner: i-ways) - Multiple - 15 - 25 LPA - Permanent - Flexible - remote ok

Revalu Impact AG is an Indo-European start up with a focus on Sustainability in buildings- sector. As part of expanding our teams in India, we are partnering with our IT partner, I-WAYS to recruit multiple senior developers.