đ CAT Newsletter #196 - 2023-11-19
CAT 196 - 2023-11-12 2023-11-19
Hey CATs,
Welcome to issue 196 of the climateAction.tech (CAT) Newsletter - your ( usually* ) 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
* Usually, because this newsletter was queued up to go out last week, but I misconfigured the "delayed send" feature. đ¤Śââď¸
CAT Community News
đž 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).
đŞ 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
#ď¸âŁ Slack channel highlight
- #greener-design: I asked how can we combine sustainable design choices with the constant demand for the famous âwow effectâ? Share your thoughts in the thread
- #greener-data-ai: S shared highlights from a TED talk about the dangers of AI. Have a watch and share your thoughts in the thread
- local channels: This week there have been chats in #local-italy #local-leeds #local-london #local-southeast-asia #local-aotearoa #local-chicago #local-australia and #local-switzerland!
đ Online CAT events for the rest of the year
đ Tue, Nov 21 - Europe, Africa, Asia, Oceania: CAT 2023 â year in review and celebration (share your 2023 project/win/action here)
NEW - Thu, Dec 7 - Americas, Europe, Africa: How to become a climate-conscious Product Manager? with @François Burra
đ Thu, Dec 14 - Americas, Europe, Africa: CAT 2023 â year in review and celebration (share your 2023 project/win/action here)
đŠ Community networking
Our next round of #cat-roulette matches will go out on Fri, Nov 24! Join the channel, pick your region and Donut matches you with other channel members every other week! More info
đą A cutting from Branch
Issue 6 - Navigating the interstices of digital rights and climate justice as a funder
Technology and climate affect every aspect of our daily lives. When philanthropy engages in a new space, such as the intersection of tech and climate, funders must grapple with this and work together to support shared movements across climate justice and digital rights. But what does that look like in practice? Two experienced funders from Ford Foundation and the Mozilla explain their approach stepping into a new field as it develops.
đŹ CAT videos
CAT videos, geddit? 10-15 minute videos providing accessible explainers to climate related issues.
Planet A: An explainer on Lithium
Tons of materials can make batteries, so why is the world, and the future, powered by lithium? And should we be worried weâll run out soon?
â Looking for volunteers
đ 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.
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 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.
Tue Nov 28 2023 - Energy Code Smells - Energy consumption of Java and optimization
What influence do "energy code smells" have on the energy consumption of Java applications and what influence do different runtime environments and compilers have on the efficiency and runtime behavior of applications? Tobias Hotz investigated this question in his master's thesis
Tue Nov 28 2023 - Net Zero Heroes: The Essential Appliances for Climate Action
Ten appliances are crucial for achieving global climate objectives. Learn more at the virtual launch of CLASPâs new report, âNet Zero Heroes: Scaling Efficient Appliances for Climate Change Mitigation, Adaptation & Resilience.â
Mon Dec 04 2023 - SOSV Sustainable Industry Matchup
A large virtual matchmaking event for startups and investors
Tue Dec 05 2023 - DIMPACT - measuring emissions from media and digital entertainment
Green Tech South West presents an online event showcasing the work of DIMPACT, with Catherine Van Loo from Carnstone consultancy. The DIMPACT tool estimates the emissions associated with video streaming, online banner advertising, digital publishing, and audio streaming.
Fri Dec 08 2023 - Green IO Conference Paris
Your go-to place for decarbonizing your tech stack. Great hopes have been placed in ICT to support our transition towards a low-carbon economy. But, our digital sector also emits a lot of GHG. Letâs make sure we manage to clean our own house while saving the world!
Check #external-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: Greening Web Standards at the W3C
TWiGS host Chris Adams is joined by special guests, Anne Faubry and Alexander Dawson of the W3C Community Group. This week, they discuss the Web Sustainability Guidelines as well as the Content Accessibility Guidelines. Web standards as specified by the World Wide Web consortium, play a huge role in shaping expectations about how the web is supposed to work, and for whom.
The Carbon Copy: Inflation plagues clean energy. How bad is it?
Wind, solar and batteries have seen steady, fairly predictable cost drops over the last two decades. But now a combination of pressures â supply-chain turmoil, grid constraints, interest rates, labor costs â has raised costs for products and projects. So how will the market work through this inflationary blip? And are there other policy interventions to ease pressures? This week, we explore clean energyâs inflation problem.
Volts: The cheapest way to permanently sequester carbon involves ... fizzy water
The idea behind the Icelandic company Carbfix is simple: pack water full of carbon dioxide (literally carbonate it, like a SodaStream) and inject it deep underground into Icelandâs porous basaltic rock. Last week I got in touch with Ălafur Teitur GuĂ°nason, Carbfixâs head of communications, to talk about where the company gets the CO2 it buries, where it plans to get it in the future, whether burial can work in other kinds of rocks and geographies, and exactly how much carbon Iceland can store.
Wicked Problems: 1.5° C in the rear-view mirror. Part 2
For the second part of this Wicked Problems mini-series, Richard Delevan spoke to one of the worldâs most respected climate science communicators, Susan Joy Hassol. She is director of Climate Communication. For 30 years, she has been translating climate science into English - making it digestible for the public and policymakers.
Climate one: Rebecca Solnit on Why Itâs Not Too Late
Looking at climate devastation while witnessing a lack of political urgency to address the crisis, it can be easy to spiral into a dark place . But a look at the larger picture gives reason to be hopeful, says writer, historian and activist Rebecca Solnit. Solnit has been examining hope and the unpredictability of change for over 20 years. In 2023 she co-edited an anthology called Itâs Not Too Late, which serves as a guidebook for changing the climate narrative from despair to possibility.
đ° News Highlights
Marketing Week: Badly designed surveys donât promote sustainability, they harm it
Brands love reported data that shows people care about sustainable consumption, but these do spurious findings just hold back real behaviour change? A dive into the pitfalls of bad survey, backed by data, from an experienced marketeer on common antipatterns when using surveys to talk about sustainability.
Medium: Measuring Carbon is Not Enough â Unintended Consequences
A interesting piece by former AWS VP of Cloud and Sustainability Adrian Cockroft on the complexities of carbon aware programming and the unintended consequences of doing so.
Canary Media: Kauai became a clean energy leader. Its secret? A publicly owned grid
This piece in Canary about one of the Islands in Hawaii becoming a clean energy leader by switching to a publicly owned grid is a fascinating read. It offers a direct comparison to the alternative investor owned alternative on the main Hawain Islands, where the state grants a single company a monopoly, in return for a guaranteed 10% net profit margin each year, to keep shareholders interested in staying around.
Boavizta: Are the CO2 emission reductions promised by cloud providers realistic ?
Work by one of the world class, but primarily French speaking research outfits on digital sustainability has been translated into English for the non-french speakers hurrah!
For several years now, large cloud players have presented the move to cloud as beneficial from an environmental point of view, claiming that it can reduce CO2eq emissions by up to 96% vs. on-premise infrastructure. Is this figure realistic ? How are such environmental gains calculated ? This article decrypts the figures announced by Microsoft, Google and AWS.
The Age: Tech billionaire Cannon-Brookes backs climate jobs platform Terra Do
An online platform co-founded by fellow CAT @Anshuman Bapna, backed by the green philanthropic fund of Atlassian billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes is aiming to shift 100,000 Australian workers into clean economy roles by 2027 amid warnings that without adequately upskilling the workforce, the nation risks failing to meet net zero targets. See also: this fascinating panel from Ars Electronica on climate education back in 2020 with Terra.do, the climate literacy project, XR Academy.
Ars Technica: First planned small nuclear reactor plant in the US has been canceled
Nuscale's SMR design was the only one of the new small modular nuke designs that was approved by the US gov for use in the states, and the main customer they were relying on just pulled out, citing cost overruns.
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.
Elemental Excelerator - Director of Innovation (Buildings/Built Environment) - $97,400 - $163,500 - Permanent - Flexible - remote ok
Elemental is looking for a highly collaborative, organized and experienced individual to work with our Portfolio Team leading the recruitment, diligence and management of Elementalâs buildings/built environment portfolio companies. These are companies focused on a broad range of technologies spanning real estate, land use and urban planning, architecture, engineering, construction, energy efficiency, and HVAC, among other technologies.
SecondMuse - Director, Climate Tech - $105,000-120,000 - Permanent - Flexible - remote ok
We are looking for a full-time Director to lead the delivery and strategic growth of our For Climate Tech programs along with other NYC-based opportunities. The Director will oversee two flagship startup accelerator programs, the Scale For ClimateTech program which has been running since 2018 and served 69 entrepreneurs across four cohorts and Venture For ClimateTech which has been running since 2020 reaching 40 entrepreneurs across three cohorts.
Green Coding Berlin GmbH - GREEN OPERATIONS AND MARKETING MANAGER - 4,000 - 8,000 EUR / month - Permanent - Flexible - remote ok
We create open source tools to measure the energy use of software in CI-Build-Pipelines, VMs, Containers and User Desktop environments, and e are seeking an experienced and dynamic individual to join our organization as a Operations and Marketing Manager (OMM). The OMM will be responsible for overseeing and optimizing our companyâs day-to-day operations, fundraising and general customer/ client outreach. Please note that we are looking for someone that is fluent enough to write a grant proposal in german! If you donât speak enough german you can still apply but please elaborate on your plan to help us in the near future.
Elemental Excelerator - Senior Events Coordinator - $68,200-$106,600/year - Permanent - Flexible - remote ok
This position will report to Elementalâs Senior Events Manager and be a part of its creative team. Weâre looking for someone who has an events background, experience with producing in-person and virtual events, maintains a high level of detail, and thrives in managing deadlines to meet project needs. We also want someone who is an excellent collaborator, strong communicator, and is open to feedback and iteration.
Overstory - Multiple - âŹ70-90k for seniors in European locations - Permanent - Totally remote
Overstory uses satellite imagery and machine learning to understand trees! Weâre a flexible and diverse remote-first climate tech startup, with a growing customer base of utilities who use our product to manage vegetation to avoid power outages and wildfire.
Weâre looking for a Data Engineer who is great at Python and working with large scale data pipelines. We're also hiring Senior Full Stack Engineers with Typescript.