🌍 CAT Newsletter #194 - 2023-10-29
CAT 194 - 2023-10-29
Hey CATs,
Welcome to issue 194 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
🐾 Show your CAT PAWS
What did you get up to in 2023? Share Projects, Actions, Wins, or Stuff you learned at CAT (PAWS!) by adding a slide to our CAT member PAWS presentation. These slides will be part of our 2023 - year in review presentation which is shared and celebrated publicly and in our end of year events (eastern-friendly | western-friendly).
Some examples of what you might want to share: A talk you held this year (like N who talked at this weeks’ Design for Planet festival), a green win in your company (like T who shared that his employer now has an official methodology for estimating carbon emissions of their projects), or something you learned from a CAT Slack post or from our events (like learnings from the summer book club that M hosted).
🪙 Apply for a mini grants
Got a project in mind for 2024? Applications are open for our next round of mini grants! Apply through this form and your project will be evaluated in December. More info
#️⃣ Slack channel highlight
#behaviour-psychology: A shared the Climate Emotions Wheel. How are you currently feeling? Where do you land on the wheel? Share in the thread
#greener-infra: Thibaud is asking - if you’re switching infrastructure provider, and you have good access to people there to ask for a lot of information on what they’re up to in the sustainability space – what would you ask? Chime in with your thoughts in the thread.
📅 Online CAT events for the rest of the year
▶️ Thu, Nov 2 - Americas, Europe, Africa: Watch Party: Workplace organising in the tech industry
🎉 Tue, Nov 21 - Europe, Africa, Asia, Oceania: CAT 2023 – year in review and celebration (share your 2023 project/win/action here)
🎉 Thu, Dec 14 - Americas, Europe, Africa: CAT 2023 – year in review and celebration (share your 2023 project/win/action here)
🍩 Community networking
Our next round of #cat-roulette matches will go out on Fri, Oct 27! Join the channel, pick your region and Donut matches you with other channel members every other week! More info
🌱 A cutting from Branch
Issue 6 - The climate change situation is being handled like treating a large, deep cut with a Band-Aid’: An interview with Alana Manchineri
“By sharing Alana’s views and the collective work of COIAB (Coordination of Indigenous Organizations of the Brazilian Amazon), we wish to inspire the understanding that debates on climate change and technology can only lead us to sustainable and desirable futures if they entangle radical consideration about Indigenous rights and territories.”
* CAT videos
CAT videos, geddit? 10-15 minute videos providing accessible explainers to climate related issues.
Which will be the engine of the future?
Trucks and buses make up around 2% of traffic in Europe, but 25% of emissions, so manufacturers are under immense pressure to reduce them to meer climate goals. But should they bet on fully electric batteries, hydrogen fuel cells or even both? Multinationals are reaching different conclusions. And the wrong choice could be expensive.
✋ Looking for volunteers
* CAT online event volunteer • minimum 2hrs / month
Help organise and/or run our online events. You can sign up to do this for just a few months or stick around for longer.
* 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 Nov 09 2023 - Climate x Deep Tech Happy Hour #15
For those of you in Paris we meet in-person every month to chat about climate, deeptech, science and entrepreneurship. Attendees typically include Founders, scientists, engineers, operators, investors, etc.
Can't wait to meet you there!
Thu Nov 23 2023 - SDIA Green Coding Summit
The SDIA Green Coding Summit, 23-24 November 2023 in Berlin, invites you to join the leading experts and communities brought together in one historic location to advance a shared roadmap for Green Coding, with talks and free workshops from world experts in the field.
Thu Nov 09 2023 - Secondhand Santa! Tips and tricks for preloved shopping online
In this fun festive session we'll be joined by Jess Potter from UsedandLoved.com to share her top tips for preloved shopping online this Christmas and find some new healthier and happier relationships with online retailers. Use CAT for a free ticket.
Check #external-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: New Research Horizons
This Week in Green Software has Dr. Daniel Schien from the University of Bristol, UK, joining host Chris Adams to talk about a decade’s worth of researching digital sustainability - the lessons we’ve learned along the way, the surprises that come up when comparing the environmental impacts of printing presses vs servers, and television from from streaming, and where the fiels is taking us.
Zero: The EV revolution isn’t just on four wheels
Cars are only half the electric vehicle story. There are also billions of two and three wheelers that need to be electrified, as well as bigger vehicles like vans, trucks and buses. In this bonus episode of Zero, we’re joined again by Colin McKerracher, BloombergNEF’s head of advanced transport, to look beyond electric cars and hear how electrification is going for other forms of road transport. Are batteries still the answer?
Outrage and Optimism: 218. October Mailbag
This week it is over to you, our listeners as the hosts strive to answer all of your challenging and wonderful questions: Should we be having children? How long have we got? How do international conflicts impact climate? And so many more…
Thank you so much to everyone who took the time to send through a question to our hosts, you made this a very special episode. Apologies if we weren’t able to get to yours, please do go and engage with us on social media and share your thoughts.
GreenIO #26 - Digital Sustainability in LATAM with Catalina Zapata and Ismael Velasco
With Catalina Zapata - founder of La Web Verde community in Colombia - and Ismael Velasco - founder of the Adora foundation and based in Mexico - Gaël Duez explores the momentum of Digital Sustainability in Latin America as well as the pitfalls it faces. From COP21 memories to the structure of the IT industry in LATAM, both guests share unconventional wisdom as well as tips for any IT workers based in LATAM to green the Web
** News Highlights**
PWC: State of Climate Tech 2023 - How can the world reverse the fall in climate tech investment?
Accounting / audit / consulting firm PwC summariseds the last year’s activity in its fourth annual State of Climate Tech report. Compared to an all time high of around 130bn USD in 2021 , investment has dropped to around 45bn USD, around the same level as 2019 now, but climate tech is at least making up a larger share of VC investments now.
Ars Technica: Apple’s “carbon neutral” claims are facing increased scrutiny
Apple faces scrutiny from European environmental and consumer groups over its claims that its latest devices are “carbon neutral,” a term that Brussels proposes to ban in corporate marketing because it is “misleading.” The iPhone maker last month put its “environmentally friendly” credentials at the center of its biggest annual product launch. It called some Apple Watch models its “first-ever carbon neutral products,” part of a drive to extend the classification across all its devices by the end of the decade.
Carbon Brief: Global CO2 emissions could peak as soon as 2023, IEA data reveals
The IEA’s latest World Energy Outlook 2023 says it now expects CO2 emissions to peak “in the mid-2020s” and an accompanying press release says this will happen “by 2025”.
Carbon Brief’s analysis of figures, the IEA’s own data shows the peak in global CO2 coming as early as this year, partly due to what the outlook describes as the “legacy” of the global energy crisis triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Datacentre dynamics: Gas-burner Crusoe borrows $200 million to buy Nvidia GPU to put for “digital flaring” powered data centres
Crusoe Crusoe, the company that started out offering cryptomining but is switching to offer cloud AI services, along with graphics and scientific computing on its containerized high-performance micro data centers, which are located at oil wells and powered by gas that would otherwise be flared off and wasted. Crusoe has has borrowed $200 million to buy thousands of NVidia H100 GPUs, and make a new and interesting claim, that “Crusoe Cloud’s new capacity is powered by 100 percent carbon-free energy."
Reuters: Swiss glaciers lose 10% of volume in worst two years on record
ZURICH, Sept 28 (Reuters) - Switzerland's glaciers suffered their second worst melt rate this year after record 2022 losses, shrinking their overall volume by 10% in the last two years, monitoring body GLAMOS said on Thursday. The one-two punch for Swiss glaciers during the country's third hottest summer on record means they lost as much ice in two years as in the three decades before 1990, it said, describing the losses as "catastrophic".
The Intercept: Inside the Campaign That Put an Oil Boss in Charge of a Climate Summit
Amy Westervelt and Ben Stockton, in partnership betweeen the Intercept, the Centre for Climate Reporting and Drilled wrtie how Sultan Al Jaber, CEO of the UAE’s national oil company, secured the COP28 presidency despite questions over his green credentials, and his work overseeing a major expansion of output in what is currently the world’s 12th largest producer of oil and gas.
Scientific American: The World Solved Acid Rain. We Can Also Solve Climate Change
Opinion piece from Hannah Ritche from Our World in Data - “In my role at Our World in Data, I’ve spent years looking at how these problems have evolved, and I think that it’s worth studying these issues, not only for hope, but to understand what went right and what can help us face today’s crises. An eye-opening example is acid rain; studying how the world tackled this geopolitically divisive problem can give us some insights into how we can tackle climate change today.“
* 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.
QuantumScape - multiple roles - Salary ranges from $116k to $213k - Permanent - Flexible - remote ok
We develop improved batteries for electric vehicles that could lengthen range, decrease charging time, improve safety, and be more recyclable than lithium ion batteries. We are hiring in a number of roles, including cybersecurity, data science, data engineering, and software engineering.
Marble - Founder, Critical Minerals (Mining / Refining / Geology) - €2,500 to €3,000 per month - Contract - Flexible - remote ok
We're hiring mining innovators to create new mining companies for critical minerals in the energy transition! At Marble, we're deeply involved in this field and confident in the opportunity to foster new mining champions! We seek entrepreneurial scientists with deep technical expertise with critical minerals. Our next Founders-in-Residence cohort starts late November in Paris.
Green Screen Coalition Catalyst Fund - up to 40k USD project funding - Project based - Remote OK
We’re launching the Catalyst Fund to support the burgeoning ecosystem of actors working on the intersection of digital rights and climate justice to build cross-territorial strategies and weave thematic threads across movements. The Fund seeks to support proposals addressing a range of issues and a range of different scopes. The grant period will be no longer than one year and with a total grant amount between $10k and $40k with three tiers.