đ CAT Newsletter #197 - 2023-11-26
CAT 197 - 2023-11-26
Hey CATs,
Welcome to issue 197 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
đ Year in review
With only about 5 weeks to go weâre nearing the end of 2023! If youâre curious about what happened this year at CAT, check out our 2023 - year in review presentation. And you can still add your project / action / win / stuff you learned at CAT to our CAT member PAWS presentation. Plus our member survey is open again, so please take 5-10mins to share your thoughts on the community.
đ From the blog
A new CAT Volunteer Profile has been published on the blog, thanks @Hannah for sharing your super inspiring climate story and wonderful pics of your garden!
#ïžâŁ Slack channel highlights
- #carbon-footprint: M learned about the Green Software Foundationâs Impact Framework. Have you read about it too? What do you think? Share thoughts in the thread
- #films-books-media: C recommended a holiday fiction read called A Psalm for the Wild-Built in this thread.
- #greener-infra: T shared a paper about measuring the carbon footprint of databases through DBJoules in this thread.
đ CAT events for the rest of the year
đ  Thu, Dec 7 - Americas, Europe, Africa: How to become a climate-conscious Product Manager? with @François Burra
âïž Tue, Dec 12 (in-person) - London, UK: Climate Community Winter Party\nOther in-person events were shared / are being planned in #local-chicago, #local-munich and #local-london
đ Thu, Dec 14 - Americas, Europe, Africa: CAT 2023 â year in review and celebration (share your 2023 project/win/action here)
Ilaria is proposing a new CAT event around the future of digital identity! Show your interest by filling out this form.
đ© Community networking
Our next round of #cat-roulette matches will go out on Fri, Dec 8! Join the channel, pick your region and Donut matches you with other channel members every other week! More info
đ± A cutting from Branch
Issue 6 - Decentralized and rooted in care: envisioning the digital infrastructures of the future
Itâs 2043. We honor the struggles and drive of the people who came before us, and those who will come after. We will tend the flame until we create the fire. Here you will find stories of built, created, disrupted and transformed digital infrastructures. Learn about our once speculative, now real, desired futures through them.
đŹ CAT videos
CAT videos, geddit? 10-15 minute videos providing accessible explainers to climate related issues.
Planet A: Why your coffee may soon taste different
Coffee is a daily routine for millions across the globe, but climate change is threatening production. What can be done to avoid a potential shortage? A fascinating look into how climate changes affects the second most traded commodity in the world, and how growers are adapting.
â Looking for volunteers
đ CAT online event volunteer âą 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.
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.
Thu Dec 07 2023 - #GovClimate Show and Tell
Short show and tells with Q&As from people acting on climate change within their public sector roles.
Thu Dec 07 2023 - Exploring Satellites / SpaceTech
In December, Working in Sustainable Technology are exploring how developments in satellites and broader space technology are aiding in understanding climate change and further positively impacting our planet.
Speakers: Mark Stokes (Magdrive) and Charlie Bunce (Trade in Space)đ«
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€  Podcasts
The latest climate-related podcast episodes. Don't forget, if you're looking around, there's a list of podcasts maintained by CATs
Zero: Can an oil exec successfully lead COP28?
The UN Climate Conference COP28 starts next week. Before Akshat heads to the conference heâs joined by Aaron Rutkoff, the editor of Bloomberg Green, to talk about what COPâs current controversial president Sultan Al Jaber has accomplished so far and what he must achieve. They also decode COP jargon like âorderly decline,â discuss the stakes for the UAEâs biggest diplomatic exercise and expectations for the final communiquĂ©.
Environment Variables: Modeling Carbon Aware Software
This Week, host Chris Adams is joined by TU Berlin researcher Iegor Riepin to talk about their recent published work where they modeled the entire European electricity grid in Python, with open source software PyPSA, to study the effects of different types of load shifting patterns for carbon aware software, and how it can be most efficiently applied to the world of Green Software. Geek factor 11.
Catalyst with Shayle Khan: The cost of nuclear
Nuclear construction costs in the U.S. are some of the highest in the world. On the other hand, South Korea has some of the lowest costs in the world. In this episode, Shayle talks to Jessica Lovering, co-founder and executive director of the Good Energy Collective, a nonprofit that researches and promotes nuclear power policies, about why this is, and what it means for low carbon power in future.
GreenIO: #28 Rage against the AI with Anastasis Stamatis, Lou Welgryn and Theo Alves Da Costa
AI comes with many questions and this episode comes with a clear angle to debate it: how do data experts specialized in impact business such as Lou Welgryn and Theo Alves Da Costa - the 2 founders of the NGO Data for Good - and Anastasis Stamatis - the founder of Dataphoria wrestle with the trade-offs of greening of tech, and greening with tech? Also the lowdown on the first ever GreenIO Conference in Paris!
Volts: Managing a distributed grid
In this episode, Astrid Atkinson, co-founder of Camus Energy, talks about her companyâs âgrid orchestrationâ work of helping utilities see, track, and coordinate the distributed energy resources in their territories - by applying the lessons learned in SRE at Google, to the grid.
Wicked Problems: Climate Capitalism, Optimism, Fatalism, and 1.5C in the rearview
claire brady and Richard Delevan chat through Akshat Rathiâs new book, Climate Capitalism, the answers to the question of what should we be saying about the global 1.5C target in light of new research - from Leo Hickman of Carbon Brief, asked by James Murray at the BusinessGreen Net Zero Festival, and Akshat Rathi of Bloomberg and Solitare Townsend of the consultancy, Futerra.
Climate one: Six People Who've Changed Jobs for Climate
One of the most common questions people ask about climate is: what can I do? Some people change their light bulbs, drive EVs and change their diet. But on their own, none of those changes would not be enough to mitigate the climate crisis. On the other hand, one of our most valuable resources is time. And since we spend so much time working, a job change may be the most effective change an individual can make. Those changes can be incremental or dramatic.Â
đ° News Highlights
Drilled: Overconsumption Is an Easy Problem to Fix: That's Why Talking About It Is a Threat
Recently I spoke with researcher Jennifer Jacquet, professor at University of Miami and author of The Playbook: How to Deny Science, Sell Lies, and Make a Killing in the Corporate World, about a key difference between how the fossil fuel industry, tobacco industry, and animal agriculture industry have approached the question of individual behavior and consumer choice (in the context of climate). Here's roughly how each industry approaches it.
Medium: Detecting bitcoin miners by their carbon emissions
Can we identify power plants used for cryptocurrency mining using only their carbon emissions? Yes we can, read on to find out how. From fellow CAT @jeff burka
Canary Media: Portugal just ran on 100% renewables for six days in a row
For nearly a week, the country of 10 million met customer needs with wind, hydro and solar â a test run for operating the grid without fossil fuels.
The Guardian: Breakthrough batteryâ from Sweden may cut dependency on China
Europeâs energy and electric vehicle industries could reduce their dependency on scarce raw materials from China after the launch of a âbreakthroughâ sodium-ion battery, according to its Swedish developer. Northvolt, Europeâs only large homegrown electric battery maker, has said it has made a lower cost, more sustainable battery designed to store electricity which does not use lithium, nickel, graphite and cobalt.
Euronews: SUVs could be the latest casualty of climate change as Paris tries to drive them out
Adverts for a Toyota SUV have been banned in the UK on environmental grounds as Paris looks to push big cars out of the city with higher parking fees.
Sustainability by Numbers: Hannah ritchie - we have enough transition minerals
Our World in Data, editor Hannah Ritches runs through the numbers needed for a transition off of fossil fuels, as well as introducing the language people use when talking about how much metal is in the earth, versus how much is realistic to ever dig up and use, and what we can do to reduce how much we need.
The Carbon Brief: Chinaâs emissions set to fall in 2024 after record growth in clean energy
Some upbeat news from China, accordingly to Carbon Briefâs analysis: Chinaâs carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are set to fall in 2024 and could be facing structural decline, due to record growth in the installation of new low-carbon energy sources.
đ° Â 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.
RouteZero - Full-stack software engineer - ÂŁ30-35k - Permanent - Flexible - remote ok
RouteZero is hiring a full-stack developer (Flutter and Typescript). Weâre decarbonising our customerâs largest source of emissions: travel. We aim to prevent millions of tonnes of COâ entering the atmosphere by helping customers deploy the most effective carbon-cutting actions, from low-carbon travel booking to carbon budgets and social influence tools.
Elemental Excelerator - Portfolio Experience Analyst - $54,600 - $85,400 - Permanent - Flexible - remote ok
This role will be responsible for activating our community of engaged founders through the development of program communications, founder tools, newsletters, and general outreach, as well as supporting the organization and execution of portfolio-facing events and Elementalâs accelerator program tracks. This is a dynamic position that works both cross-collaboratively within the organization to provide transparency across portfolio team initiatives, and directly with companies to help them scale and make a positive impact.
Elemental Excelerator - Policy Lab Senior Operations Manager - $86,500-$140,100/year - Permanent - Flexible - remote ok
Elemental is seeking a passionate self-starter to serve as a Policy Lab Senior Operations. This position will report to Elementalâs Managing Director, Policy and support our work and systems to help Elementalâs portfolio companies and key policy leaders scale climate solutions with deep community impact. The role will also work closely with our Senior Policy Advisor who leads our Policy Fellows program and with our Senior Manager of Portfolio Experience who supervises coaching and other supports for our portfolio companies. The role requires excellent collaboration skills, strong workflow management, strong execution and attention to detail, and ability to create and maintain systems that assess key trends and data to enable innovation and impact in our teamâs work.
Elemental Excelerator - Developer in Residence - The starting hourly rate for this opportunity is $150/hr. - Contract - Flexible - remote ok
Elemental is seeking a Developer in Residence to join our team and support our portfolio of climate tech entrepreneurs as they navigate the complexities of deploying a first-of-a-kind (FOAK) or early commercial climate tech project. In addition to bringing your expertise as a project developer to 1:1 and group work with our portfolio companies, you will serve as a thought partner to Elemental as we work to develop and build out more support offerings for our portfolio, including a roster of specialized project developers to support their journey.