š CAT Newsletter 225 - 2024-06-23
CAT 225 - 2024-06-23
Hey CATs,
Welcome to issue 225 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 outĀ our onboarding checklist.
Remember you can unsubscribe from this newsletter at any time - the link is at the bottom.
Stay safe & healthy š š š±
CAT Community News
š Get involved
Our fundedĀ mini grantĀ projectĀ "How to become a Climate-Conscious Product Manager" case studies and CAT conferenceĀ is looking for case studies! MessageĀ @FranƧois BurraĀ if you know of any practical examples towards making a digital product and/or organization more climate conscious.
#ļøā£ Slack channel highlights
OurĀ #carbon-footprintĀ channel is back! Join for convos all around measuring greenhouse gas emissions for your company, product, or service.
ā¤ļø Help a CAT
@Richard LittauerĀ is looking for feedback on his new podcast (ossforclimate.sustainoss.org)Ā here. The podcast is about how open source software is relevant to mitigating and calming climate change.
@Matthew GriffinĀ isĀ asking whether there's interest for in-person eventsĀ or if there are any existing Sustainable Software/Technology events in the Newcastle upon Tyne area (UK).
š§ Knowledge base deepdive
Greener Games: A sprinkle of playfulness can make complex topics easier to digest, so we invite you to explore the growing list of climate-related online & board games in the CAT knowledge base. Use your CAT Slack account to log in, and help a fellow CAT learn something new through play by adding your own gaming suggestions and reflections.
š CAT events
Thu, June 27 - Zurich [in person]: CAT social get-together 18:30 at Kraftwerk
Wed, July 10 - CAT Open Meeting
Other local events were shared inĀ #local-aotearoa,Ā #local-italy,Ā #local-london, andĀ #local-uk
š© 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 joinĀ #cat-roulette, pick your region and wait for a message fromĀ DonutĀ about your match! Our next round of matches will go out onĀ Fri, July 5. More info
Media, events, and news
šŗ CAT recommendations
š± A cutting from Branch issue 8
Octavia's Future is Here, Now What
Published in 1993, Parable of the Sower's opening page is set on July 20, 2024. As we quickly approach that day, we can see the countless ways in which Butler's incredible imagination has quickly become the reality many of us are living in. But at the same time, the approaching anniversary of Parable of the Sower's opening page is a chance to embrace the protagonist's vision: a community of optimists and believers willing to bring us through the danger of the world that humanity has created. If we dream beyond the bounds of what is accepted, if we imagine into the collective, we have a chance of finding a future that is no longer guided by extraction and conflict, but instead by care and compassion.
ā¶ļø CAT videos
10-15 minute videos providing accessible explainers to climate related issues.
Planet A: How to recycle an old U.S. military base
Construction is incredibly resource-intensive and emissions-heavy, but we can't just stop building things. Thankfully, there are mountains of construction material sitting under our noses in old buildings. How can we use old materials to make new construction greener?
š¤Ā 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: 251. World Refugee Day: Migration In A Post-Climate Change World
This week, Outrage + Optimism celebrate World Refugee Day with an interview with Gaia Vince. The hosts discuss how extreme heat, floods or natural disasters cause tens of millions of people to leave their homes behind. They look at how climate migration is happening now and will only happen faster and with greater impact. Gaia Vince, author of Nomad Century: How to Survive the Climate Upheaval talks to the hosts about the need for what she calls 'honest pragmatism about human mobility'. With Gaia's steer, the hosts and Gaia discuss ways we might manage this inevitable movement of people and how to implement long-term solutions rather than patch-ups.Ā Ā
Volts: What's up with electric aviation?
"In this episode, CEO Kyle Clark of BETA Technologies walks us through the details of how to design, build, and operate electric planes ā first for relatively short light-cargo flights, but eventually, he says, for all of aviation. I loved this conversation so much."
Catalyst with Shayle Khan: Demystifying the Chinese EV market
New electric vehicles ā including both battery electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles ā make up nearly half of new car sales in China. Compared to slowing EV sales in Europe and the U.S. the Chinese market is booming.
So what's going on? In this episode, Shayle talks to TP Huang, who writes a Substack about EVs, clean energy, and other tech focused on China.
Environment Variables: The Week in Green Software: FinOps, GreenOps and the Cloud
On this episode of TWiGS, host Anne Currie is joined by Navveen Balani of Accenture and fellow GSF member. This conversation navigates the landscapes of, and intersections between GreenOps, DevOps, and FinOps, as well as the vital role of Infrastructure as Code in marrying financial and ecological efficiencies in cloud operations.
Green IO #41 - Decarbonizing AWS with Adrian Cockcroft
What can AWS users achieve today in terms of decarbonization? And what can they expect tomorrow? šļø In this episode, Gael Duez welcomes Adrian Cockcroft, the former creator and leader of the AWS sustainability team who now leads the Green Software Foundation project "Real Time Cloud". They had an in-depth chat about measuring carbon for software and the sustainability challenges of Cloud providers, starting with AWS.
š 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 Jun 27 2024 - TEDxSydney Salon ā 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.
Fri Jul 05 2024 - What Design Can Do Live Amsterdam 2024
A full day of talks and workshops on the intersection of design, climate action and social justice. Exploring what it looks like to design a regenerative and restorative future.
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.
Fri Oct 11 2024 - Better Software
Italian Conference about Sustainable IT
š° News Highlights
Electrek: The 'One simple trick' Paris used to reduce air pollution 40% ahead of Olympics
The 'One simple trick' trope has long become a running joke among journalists, usually signifying the beginning of a scam. But every once in a while, it's exactly right. Such is the case with how Paris was able to transform its air quality and thus the quality of life in the city in the run-up to the upcoming 2024 Summer Olympics.
So what was the trick? Kicking out cars. Or perhaps more specifically, Paris reduced the city's dependence on cars in favor of alternative forms of transportation.
The Journal.ie: 'First of its kind' procurement arrangement allows public bodies to buy remanufactured laptops
THE GOVERNMENT HAS launched a new framework to allow public bodies to buy remanufactured laptops in what's been described as the "first arrangement of its kind in the EU". It was previously advised that public bodies should always buy new products, however all public service bodies will now be able to buy a remanufactured alternative. The contract has an estimated value of up to ā¬30 million and it's thought that over the four-year term, around 60,000 remanufactured laptops could be bought over new ones. This would equate to a reduction of 19 million kilograms of carbon dioxide, 72 million kilograms of mined resource preservation and 11 billion litres of water saved, as well as avoiding the e-waste from the disposal of devices.
Frontiers for Young Minds: We Are Not on Track - Greenhouse Gas Emissions Are Higher Than Ever!
The climate crisis, explained by IPCC lead authors, but aimed at, and reviewed by an audience in their early-to-mid teens. This is a fantastic piece of science communication and full of helpful jargon busters, useful for a wide range of audiences. Also features some absolute some gems like: "Many governments and companies have made additional climate pledges, promising to reduce emissions, but they do not yet have policies in place to meet these pledges.This is like promising to clean up your room, but staying on the sofa instead of starting the job."
Green Web Foundation: How much of the internet is covered by credible Net Zero targets? What we learned
We recently concluded a project with our friends at Wikirate to understand how much of the internet is covered by credible Net Zero targets. We worked together to crowdsource data for the firms behind the top 20 most queried domains online. In this post we summarise the key findings, what we learned about crowdsourcing sustainability data and how it has informed some of our future work in 2024 and 2025.
Ben James: The Big Guide to Sustainable Aviation Fuel
Probably the best, most accessble explainer for the solution touted as the main way we might reduce the impact of flying over the next decade (apart from wellā¦ not flying, obvs)
The world's existing fleet of planes is huge, and can only run on jet fuel. Therefore, we need a drop-in fuel replacement that doesn't cause warming. This is called Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF). This piece is a concentrated onboarding guide to SAF. We'll walk through the different methods for making SAF, and explain what's tricky and exciting. No chemistry knowledge is assumed!
Wagtail blog: Leaner images, lower footprint, at scale
Remember our 2023 Google Summer of Code internships, in partnership with the Green Web Foundation? Our interns Aman and Paarth worked on image weight reductions, introducing AVIF support to Wagtail and revamped template tags for multi-format images. Well ā we now have data confirming this work has paid off and results in very tangible emissions reductions for Wagtail websites.
Guardian: Future impact of proposed fossil fuel projects must be assessed, UK court rules
Landmark judgment says planning bodies must account for burning of extracted fuel when considering site proposals:
"The whole purpose of extracting fossil fuels is to make hydrocarbons available for combustion," three of the five judges agreed. "It can therefore be said with virtual certainty that, once oil has been extracted from the ground, the carbon contained within it will sooner or later be released into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide and so will contribute to global warming."
"This is a huge win in the fight for a livable climate," said Tessa Khan, a climate lawyer and executive director at Uplift, one of the groups challenging Rosebank. "Government can no longer keep repeating that the emissions from burning oil reserves don't count."
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.
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.
BlueConduit - Data Scientist - $125-145K - Permanent -
BlueConduit was founded in 2019 in response to the Flint water crisis. First in Flint, and then across the country, we pioneered the predictive modeling approach to lead service line identification and replacement, accelerating the removal of this significant health concern and saving communities millions of dollars in avoided digs. We are passionate about using data science and AI for public good, improving social equity, and protecting the environment, and are now working in new ways to help serve communities' needs outside lead service line replacement.
Open Supply Hub - Sales Director - $135,000 to $150,000 + monthly commissions. - Permanent - Totally remote
Help us power the transition to safe and sustainable production with the world's most complete, open and accessible global supply chain map. This is an exciting opportunity to bring your sales skills to a global NGO with a big and impactful mission!
Vizzuality - Front End Engineer - ā¬30,000 - ā¬49,000 - Permanent - Totally remote
Vizzuality is hiring a mid-level/senior frontend developer with experience and proficiency in ReactJS/TypeScript.
At Vizzuality, we create data-driven tools for international organizations tackling climate change, biodiversity, and inequality. We're seeking individuals who combine a global perspective with a strong inclination toward teamwork, a deep understanding of coding, and an unwavering commitment to continuous learning. You should possess a growth mindset to develop T-shaped skills. Here's a chance for you to make a difference!
Support our work
You can support us financially onĀ Open Collective.