🌍 CAT Newsletter 222 - 2024-06-02
CAT 222 - 2024-06-02
Hey CATs,
Welcome to issue 222 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.
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Stay safe & healthy 😌 💚 🐱
CAT Community News
🙋 Get involved
Our funded mini grant project "How to become a Climate-Conscious Product Manager" case studies and CAT conference is now looking for case studies - practical examples to bring the theory to life and inspire action. Share your story if you've taken any actions towards making your digital product and/or organization more climate conscious and more sustainable (successfully or not), we'd love to hear from you. Submit your case study here, and we'll review for potential inclusion the next version of the Playbook: https://forms.gle/R4vEgtRLcZD3TxjW7
🧠 Knowledge base deepdive
Welcome to the Knowledge Base: If you're still unsure about how to use the CAT knowledge base to record, collect, and browse community knowledge, visit the recently updated welcome page for all the basics. You can easily log into CAT knowledge base with your CAT Slack account. (If you don't have that yet, we invite you to join our community first.)
📅 CAT events
Tue, May 28 - London [in person]: Code Green London May Meetup (Community Organised Event)
Check our channels with the #local prefix on Slack for more local events and conversations.
🍩 Community networking
Get to know other CATs and make some friends in the community. Every 2 weeks, we match 2-3 CATs so you can connect over a quick 30-minute call. Simply join #cat-roulette, pick your region and wait for a message from Donut about your match! Our next round of matches will go out on Fri, June 7. More info
Media, events, and news
😺 CAT recommendations
🌱 A cutting from Branch issue 8
Toward a Pragmatic Future: Accepting Imperfect Systems whilst Striving for Regeneration
"When approaching the urgent challenges of our times—climate change, rising inequality, eroding social fabric—it's all too easy to focus on all that's broken and missing in the world; all that is less than whole. Yet finding beauty in apparent imperfection might actually be vital along the journey toward regeneration."
▶️ CAT videos
10-15 minute videos providing accessible explainers to climate related issues.
Planet A: The mind-blowing thing we get WRONG about energy
Fossil fuels still supply 80% of our energy. And people point to this number to say it's impossible to switch to renewables, especially if we want to do it quick enough to stop climate change. But their argument overlooks just how much energy we waste – and how we could do it better.
🎤 Podcasts
The latest climate-related podcast episodes. Don't forget, if you're looking around, there's a list of podcasts maintained by CATs
Outrage and Optimism: 248. Cheaper, Faster, Better: How We'll Win the Climate War
This week, Christiana, Tom and Paul bring the politics with a discussion on the upcoming UK election. Our hosts chat to Tom Steyer, Co-Executive Chair of Galvanize Climate Solutions, a mission-driven investment platform, about clean power S-curves, the Climate War and Texas.
Christiana questions whether economic competitiveness will win over "political tentacles" in the urgent timeframe we face, particularly in the context of Trump's current position of advantage in the US electoral race. Tune in to hear what Tom Steyer and our co-hosts think.
Catalyst with Shayle Khan: Heavy duty decarbonization
In this episode, Shayle talks to his colleague Andy Lubershane, partner and head of research at Energy Impact Partners. They talk through the limits of electrification and the alternatives for decarbonizing trucks, ships, and planes, drawing on Andy's recent blog post, "How will we move the big, heavy things?"
Environment Variables: The Week in Green Software: Building Green Software 2
In this episode of the TWiGS, host Chris Adams welcomes back Anne Currie, Sara Bergman, and Sarah Hsu, authors of the book Building Green Software. They dive into the latest updates and hot topics at the intersection of sustainability and software engineering. The discussion highlights the importance of making software and hardware more efficient and explores cutting-edge topics like serverless computing on Kubernetes with WebAssembly, the circular economy for electronics, and the potential for dynamic pricing in cloud services based on renewable energy availability.
Green IO #39 - European Regulations in Tech: some insider perspectives with Kim Van Sparrentak and Max Schulze
🔎 Major regulations have been built up in Europe these past years impacting the Tech sectors. How have they been built? What does it take to pass these kinds of bills in the unique European Union political system? And what are the consequences for the people working in the digital industry?
🎙️ This episode 39 welcomes Kim Van Sparrentak, a Member of the European Parliament involved in legislation related to tech and sustainability, and Max Schulze, the founder and chairman of the Sustainable Digital Infrastructure Alliance, one of the main lobby groups for more responsible technology. Together with Gael Duez, they share their perspective on the European regulations in Tech.
Datacentre Dynamics Zero Episode 56 - Mushroom recycling with Joanne Rodriguez, Mycocyle
Mushrooms can be used to build more than just toad-stools. In this episode, Joanne Rodriguez, CEO at Mycocycle, talks about using mycelium to break down data center construction waste and make new construction materials. Listen in to this fung-guide to the future of waste management.
Carbon Copy: AI's main constraint: Energy, not chips
As hyperscalers scramble to build new data centers, experts agree that energy is a major bottleneck — but the technologies exist to serve new loads cleanly.
So, are growing concerns over AI's power demand justified? How are they contributing to America's growing hunger for electricity? And what technologies and grid management techniques can address it?
Volts: Envisioning a more democratic, bottom-up energy system
In this episode, California electricity guru Lorenzo Kristov shares his vision of a just, democratic, "bottom-up" grid based in distributed local energy. Kristov was a principal at the California Independent System Operator (CAISO), which runs California's electricity grid, for more than 18 years. He left in 2017 to become an independent consultant, analyst, and all-around electricity guru.
Drilled Media: The Coordinated Attack on Shareholder Activism
The backlash against ESG is continuing, with a string of lawsuits aimed at shutting down shareholder activism. We don't often talk about shareholder activism in the vein of protecting protest, but it's absolutely part of the story. Andrew Behar, CEO of shareholder advocacy group As You Sow, joins us to explain what's going on, and why anyone who cares about basic rights needs to be tuning into the ESG fight.
📅 Submitted events
Want an event listed here? Use this event listing form to submit the details so we can add it in the newsletter.
Fri May 31 2024 - ClimateCon! Boulder 2024
ClimateCon! is a launchpad that brings people together – in person and online – to boost collective action on climate change.
Wed Jun 05 2024 - Trend study on Green Coding
The Deutsche Energie-Agentur GmbH (dena) with support of Green Coding Solutions is doing a trend study on Green Coding to understand current levers for energy reduction and hurdles for implementation.
Thu Jun 06 2024 - Working in Sustainable Technology - Carbon Removal
June's Working in Sustainable Technology event is all about carbon removal and we're delighted to share that we'll be joined by Maarten van Roon from Carbon8 and Benjamin Todd from UNDO.
Thu Jun 27 2024 - TEDxSydney Salon – Net Positive: Visions of a Net Zero Future for Australia
Somewhere between the dystopian visions of ecosystem collapse and unrealistic utopian fantasies, the roots of Australia's Net Zero future are already taking hold.
Tue Oct 08 2024 - The Global Nature Positive Summit 2024
Global Nature Positive Summit aims to boost private sector investment to protect and repair our environment. With a focus on solutions to climate change, pollution and biodiversity loss.
📰 News Highlights
Links to discuss each story in the CAT salck
Android Police: I dug into the Fairbuds to see how user-replaceable their batteries really are
Buying new earbuds is often easy enough because there are a few good budget options and an acclaimed list of high-end earbuds with all the bells and whistles. However, earbuds dying just outside the warranty period or simply ceasing to function seems to be the new norm. We look into Fairphone's new Fairbuds, explicitly designed to buck this trend.
Euronews: Uber offers London drivers cash incentives to switch to EVs
Uber drivers in London without electric vehicles (EV) will receive a £5,000 grant to help them switch to an EV — new or used — in a bid to boost electrification, the company announced today (May 20).
Drivers can opt to spend their grant cash as a lump-sum on a purchase, or on a rental or rent-to-buy deal, Uber said, adding that drivers will be able to switch to an EV "within a day".
"We are investing $800mn globally to reduce the costs of drivers purchasing EVs," Caspar Nixon, Uber's head of corporate & product communications, told Euronews when asked whether drivers in other European capitals could soon benefit from similar incentives.
Carbon Brief Analysis: Monthly drop hints that China's CO2 emissions may have peaked in 2023
China's carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions fell by 3% in March 2024, ending a 14-month surge that began when the economy reopened after the nation's "zero-Covid" controls were lifted in December 2022.
The new analysis for Carbon Brief, based on official figures and commercial data, reinforces the view that China's emissions could have peaked in 2023.
The Guardian: No Tory MPs voted positively on climate issues since party took power, study finds
No elected Tory MPs have been rated as voting positively on climate issues, under a survey of parliamentary voting patterns since the Conservatives took power in 2010. The analysis of voting patterns by VoteClimate, an organisation set up to inform UK voters on how to cast their ballots for maximum impact on climate policy, examined all of the votes in parliament since 2010 on energy, transport, finance, housing and other issues that have an impact on the climate crisis.
Reuters: Pakistan temperatures cross 52 C in heatwave
MOHENJO DARO, Pakistan, May 27 - Temperatures rose above 52 degrees Celsius (125.6 degrees Fahrenheit) in Pakistan's southern province of Sindh, the highest reading of the summer and close to the country's record high amid an ongoing heatwave, the met office said on Monday. Extreme temperatures throughout Asia over the past month were made worse most likely as a result of human-driven climate change, a team of international scientists have said.
EU election 2024: What the manifestos say on energy and climate change
Elections for the European Parliament are taking place between 6-9 June, kicking off a process that will establish a new EU leadership.
Around 360 million EU citizens are eligible to vote. They will choose between representatives of national parties, each of which is affiliated with a broader political grouping at EU level, ranging from communists to the far-right.
In the interactive grid below, Carbon Brief tracks the commitments made by each of the main European Parliament groupings in their election manifestos, across a range of issues related to climate and energy.
Tech Radar: Windows 10 support ending could be an environmental disaster that puts 240 million PCs on the scrapheap
Windows 10 running out of road for support is going to be something of an environmental disaster in terms of old PCs going into landfills, an analyst firm has warned. As Canalys puts it: "Despite the channel's growing capabilities to support circularity, partners will not be able to refurbish and resell PCs unsupported by Windows 11."
The end result will be an estimated 240 million PCs becoming e-waste, which is around a fifth of all Windows 10 devices.
New Yorker: Images of Climate Change That Cannot Be Missed
Just as we risk becoming inured to the crisis, an exhibition, "Coal + Ice," serves as a stunning call to action.
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.
Open Energy Transition - Full-stack/Backend/Frontend Software Engineer - EUR 40-80K/year for full-stack/backend, 30-60K for frontend/UX - Permanent - Totally remote
Open Energy Transition is a non-profit energy tech company that uses and develops open-source software solutions and contributes to open data to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable, accessible and reliable energy. Our goal is to increase the pace and reduce the cost of energy system planning decisions through open collaboration and innovation. We are looking to hire 2 software engineers for two projects: a cloud compute solution for solving large energy models, and a solver benchmark website that compares various OSS/proprietary solvers on energy modelling benchmarks. The goal is to build robust, secure, and efficient open-source software to be used for energy and climate modelling and play a part in accelerating the climate transition.
Marble - Founder in Residence, Geothermal - Anywhere - 2.5-3K per month - Contract - Flexible - remote ok
Dive into the geothermal revolution and help unlock clean, sustainable energy for our planet. We're on the hunt for entrepreneurial engineers/scientists from geothermal, oil & gas, or similar sectors. If you're passionate about innovation and ready to explore cutting-edge approaches to power the net zero economy, we want you.
ExpectAI - Full Stack Engineer & Data Scientist - £35-45K, commensurate with experience - Permanent -
Join me in building ExpectAI's climate action platform that enables our customers to find and take profitable decarbonisation actions with confidence
PowerX.co - Senior Full Stack Software Engineer - $136,000 to $204,000 - Permanent -
PowerX is building energy management solutions for businesses, starting with restaurants. We believe that by equipping restaurants with the best tools to use less energy and save money, we can tackle climate change, one store at a time. PowerX is seeking a Senior Full Stack Software Engineer to play a foundational technical role in our product journey. In this role, you will be tasked with developing our product, which includes collaborating with other engineers, product owners, designers, and data team to architect, implement, and maintain new and existing features.
Salesforce - Director, Tech Sustainability - NYC: $172,200 to $290,500; Seattle: $157,900 to $266,300; SF: $172,200 to $290,500 - Permanent - Onsite only
The Tech Sustainability Lead will spearhead Salesforce's T&P Sustainability program, guiding the company towards our ambitious emissions reduction goal, ensuring compliance with evolving regulations, all while fostering innovation.
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