🌍 CAT Newsletter 226 - 2024-06-30
Hey CATs,
Welcome to issue 226 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
✏️ From the blog
Last month CATs in Switzerland gathered for the first ever CAT hackathon. In her blog post Fiona shares reflections and insights. Have a read
#️⃣ Slack channel highlights
#2-greener-software: P shared two hack projects from Terra.Do community members where they created a 'getting started guide for Green Software' on GitHub.
#external-events: The Life-centred Designer Newsletter issue #5 is out with this month's theme which is to "Design with alternate knowledge systems", such as the genius of nature, known as biomimicry.
🧠 Knowledge base deepdive
CAT Events: Use your CAT Slack account to log into the knowledge base and browse the collection of recaps and notes from various CAT events, such as the upcoming July Open Meeting. Or, if you're looking for a bit of inspiration, explore the community notes from previous Watch parties.
📅 CAT events
Wed, July 10 - CAT Open Meeting
🍩 Community networking
Like we did last year, #cat-roulette is taking July and August off. This is because a lot of people will be taking time off for the summer. We will return on September 6th! To encourage activity in this channel, we'll be removing people from this channel and you'll have to rejoin this channel if you want to be a part of #cat-roulette in the fall.
Media, events, and news
😺 CAT recommendations
🌱 A cutting from Branch issue 8
The Wabi Sabi Web
It's clear to me that as humans, we need an environment that holds these magic qualities of Wabi Sabi and yet the digital world that we spend an increasing proportion of our lives inhabiting, seems inherently free of it. Could it be possible to create a web that is more fulfilling, healthy and natural if we embraced the beauty of imperfection and impermanence in our digital worlds, in a Wabi Sabi Web? Let us imagine some ways that we could potentially bring some of the wonder of Wabi Sabi into our digital world.
▶️ CAT videos
10-15 minute videos providing accessible explainers to climate related issues.
Planet A: We need to fix landfills – here's how
Almost 40% of all garbage still ends up on places where it should not, mostly landfills. They cause many diseases and are a massive driver of climate change, releasing methane. The solutions vary from high tech modern landfilling to simple waste segregation and composting. A tour of the work being done to tackle the environmental impact of waste.
🎤 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: 252. Mission 2025: It's Time For Leaders To Lead (Recorded Live!)
This week, we recorded live from London Climate Action Week at the Mission 2025 launch event. Tom Rivett-Carnac was joined by guests Andrew Steer (Bezos Earth Fund), Adair Turner (ETC), Isabelle Noero (Earthrise), Hein Schumacher (Unilever), Tamsin Ballard (PRI), Karen Pflug (INGKA Group) and Nigar Arpadarai (COP29 Champion). Hear their conversations about how to act on climate with speed and scale.
Volts: Heat pumps with thermal batteries
"In this episode: more heat pumps! Jane Melia, co-founder and CEO of Harvest, discusses the advantages of teaming a high-end eat pump with a large thermal battery, to coordinate the timing of electricity consumption. Shifting the heat pump load can help reduce both costs and emissions."
Catalyst with Shayle Khan: Going deep on next-gen geothermal
Investment is on the rise in geothermal, where advances in drilling techniques are driving down the cost of generation right as the grid needs more clean, firm, dispatchable power to meet rising load growth. And enhanced-geothermal startup Fervo is leading the pack of entrants, signing agreements to provide power to Southern California Edison and Google.
So how ready are these next-generation geothermal technologies to scale?
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? 🎙️ 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.
📅 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 – 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
Mon Oct 14 2024 - SxSW Sydney
From a grassroots start in Austin TX, 1987 to a new, second home in Sydney Australia. Tech Innovation with track focus on Energy, Climate & Sustainability
📰 News Highlights
New Atlas: Surprise test flight heralds ultra-long-range electric aircraft by 2028
Chinese battery giant CATL says it's successfully flown a 4-ton plane using its ultra-high density "condensed batteries." It now expects to have an 8-ton electric aircraft with a range of 2,000 to 3,000 km (1,240-1,865 miles) operating in 3-4 years.
An 8-ton aircraft is a far cry from a 31-ton Boeing 737 or a 41-ton Airbus A320, but a Learjet 70/75 weighs in at just over 7 tons and can fly with nine passengers on board, which appears to be the market CATL is initially targeting. See also Electrek's coverage of the same story.
Canary Media: Meati is turning fungi into climate-friendly steaks. Will diners bite?
Climate-friendly alternative proteins have proved tough for diners and investors to swallow. After a hype-filled cycle, stalwarts like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods have grappled with declining valuations and a long road to becoming low-cost meat replacements for the masses.
Hardly auspicious conditions for raising money, but an up-and-coming alternative-meat startup called Meati nonetheless pulled in another $100 million in May, pushing the company's total funds raised to $365 million. Meati manufactures various fillets that look like chicken and beef, but are in fact made from fermenting mycelium, the fibrous root network formed by fungi.
Shuang Tan: China Court Rules in Favor of Climate Activists in Landmark Case Against Coal Plant
A grassroots NGO's lawsuit against polluters highlights the difficulties of pricing climate damages and the obstacles faced by the nation's climate litigation efforts
A regional court in China recently ruled in favor of climate activists in a lawsuit against a local coal power plant, marking a significant development as the country experiences increased legal claims against polluters and companies engaging in greenwashing.
Will the case usher in a new era of climate litigation in China? A deep dive into the question in a region where challenging the government as an individual or civil society organisation can have very different power dynamics to the rest of the world.
Carbon Brief: France election 2024: What the manifestos say on energy and climate
French citizens will go to the polls for two rounds of voting on 30 June and 7 July to elect deputies to the national assembly. Following the results of the European parliamentary elections earlier in June, French president Emmanuel Macron called a snap election. (He himself is not up for reelection until 2027.)
In the interactive grid below, Carbon Brief tracks the commitments made by each of the main party alliances in their election manifestos, across a range of issues related to climate and energy.
Datacenter Dynamics: Google buys 115MW of geothermal energy to power Nevada data centers
The search giant has agreed a new type of power supply deal with Nevada utility company NV Energy. Dubbed a "clean transition tariff," it will see NV Energy procure 115MW of renewable energy from a geothermal power plant run by Fervo Energy.
Google claims the Clean Transition Tariff will help accelerate the clean energy transition by providing companies like NV Energy with the up-front funds to invest in new technologies. It differs from a traditional power purchase agreement (PPA), where data center operators like Google procure clean energy directly from producers and provide it to the grid to offset their emissions.
Pluralistic: Cleantech has an enshittification problem
Cleantech has all the problems of EVs: it requires a large capital expenditure, it will be "smart," and it is expected to last for decades. That's rooftop solar, heat-pumps, smart thermostat sensor arrays, and home storage batteries. And just as with EVs, policymakers have focused on infrastructure and affordability without paying any attention to the enshittification risks. Your rooftop solar will likely be controlled via a Solaredge box – a terrible technology that stops working if it can't reach the internet for a protracted period (that's right, your home solar stops working if the grid fails!).
Note: interesting piece with concrete proposals to stop cars, heatpumps, and so on being bricked when companies fail.
Jobs
jobs to be updated for issue 222
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.
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 - €30,000 - €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!
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