🌍 CAT Newsletter 250 - 2024-12-15
👉 Latest newsletter
CAT 249 - 2024-12-08
Hey CATs,
Welcome to issue 249 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 😌 💚 🐱
CAT Community News
🎉 CAT 2024 year in review
Thanks to those of you who joined our CAT year in review celebration last Tuesday! For those who couldn't make it, you can find the presentation here, the recording here, and share the LinkedIn post here. We talked about CATs purpose, celebrated CAT programs & projects as well as member projects, reflected on organizing and community health, and shared goals for 2025.
As part of this reflection we also wanted to say a huuuuge CAT THANK YOU to CATs who throughout the year...
📝 ...added knowledge to Outline
💰 ...supported us financially with recurring or one-off donations via Open Collective - your donations enabled our mini grants (this year Mark completed the GreenOps survey; Fiona, Ken, Andy, Panu, and Christian ran the first ever CAT Hackathon in Zurich; and Alja ran the CAT Gen AI Exploratorium)
❤️ ...volunteered within / for the community
🌅 Help us achieve our goals in 2025
Our goals are to: 1️⃣ Keep supporting things that work (like our Slack & content publishing); 2️⃣ Enable more member projects with mini grants (some project ideas are here); 3️⃣ Implement our CAT restructure (introducing the assembly and finding a new Comms organizer)
And you can help us by…
🌱 Moving from dormant seed to active sprout with these easy actions
- Become an active community member
- Donate via Open Collective
- Give feedback and share ideas for improving the community in our member survey
🌳 Taking root & expanding your branches by increasing your involvement
- Become a volunteer
- Apply to become a CAT organizer or nominate someone
- Apply for a mini grant (learn more about mini grants)
⏸️ Upcoming break: Dec 21st to Jan 5th
Volunteers and organizers will be taking a break from Dec 21st to Jan 5th. There will be no newsletters in this time. And #cat-roulette matches will return on Fri, Jan 10th. More info about CAT Roulette
Media, events, and news
😺 CAT recommendations
▶️ CAT videos
10-15 minute videos providing accessible explainers to climate related issues.
Planet A: How a small Chinese company tricked the German state | DW Investigation
DW uncovered that dozens of Chinese climate projects, certified by the German authorities as carbon credits under the upstream emission reduction scheme, failed to deliver on promises to save millions of tons of carbon emissions. A joint investigation by DW and ZDF reveals how Germany was deceived – and exposes the shadowy company Beijing Karbon behind the alleged fraud.
🎤 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: Cutting through the climate tech hype and looking for profit
On Zero, reporter Akshat Rathi speaks to Eric Toone of Breakthrough Energy Ventures about what's hype and what's not in the world of energy startups. Breakthrough is one of the world's biggest funders of early stage climate technologies and has poured billions of dollars in more than 120 startups. Toone weighs in on everything from carbon removal to the grid, nuclear fusion, nuclear fission, and green hydrogen.
Solving for Climate: Mark Bjornsgaard: The free heat revolution
Data centres are not the most glamorous topic of discussion but they are everywhere, powering our modern, digital economy. But they can also power swimming pools, breweries and laundries, as Mark Bjornsgaard tells Hannah and Rob on this episode. 97% of the electricity that goes into a computer comes out as heat. It's an incredibly inefficient process, and more often than not this heat isn't used. So, rather than building these data centres in the middle of nowhere, Mark's company Deep Green is taking computing power to where heat is needed, offering a precious resource to communities across the UK. Could this be scaled up for use across the world?
Outrage And Optimism 277. Trump and Climate Populism with Ben Rhodes
Ben Rhodes—writer, political commentator, and former Deputy National Security Advisor under President Obama—joins the host team to dissect the challenges of a Trump 2.0 administration.
Rhodes issues a bold call for a new "climate populist" strategy, to redirect the populist right-wing outrage over climate action toward exposing the oil and gas industry's stranglehold on climate negotiations, as seen at recent COP summits.
Green IO #50 - Is Eroom's law the future of Moore's law? with Tristan Nitot
Moore's law is dead! Long live Eroom's law!
This provocative statement from Tristan Nitot highlights the pivotal role of software engineers in our journey as an industry toward a sustainable and more frugal digital world. The majority of our old devices, from smartphones to desktop, still work. How come that we waste such a massive gathering of precious resources such as minerals, energy, water and even our human time which we use to manufacture and maintain them? What should we do to break the trend of electronic waste and the ever-increasing footprint of the IT sector on our physical world?
Gael Duez sat down with Tristan Nitot to start answering these questions.
Environment Variables - Green Networking with Carlos Pignataro
In this episode of Environment Variables, Anne Currie welcomes Carlos Pignataro, a leading expert in sustainable network architecture, to explore how networks can balance energy efficiency with performance and resilience. Carlos shares insights from his career at Cisco and beyond, including strategies for reducing emissions through dynamic software principles, energy-aware networking, and leveraging technologies like IoT and Content Delivery Networks (CDNs). They discuss practical applications, the alignment of green practices with business interests, and the role of multidisciplinary collaboration in driving innovation. Tune in for actionable advice and forward-thinking perspectives on making networks greener while enhancing their capabilities.
📅 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 Dec 17 2024 - From Carbon Aware Computing To Grid Aware Computing
Something big is happening. The Green Web Foundation has launched the Grid Aware Computing project. As we develop a better understanding of Green Software, the way we think about how our stack of tech interacts with the stack of energy one layer down becomes more important.
Sat Jan 25 2025 - Fundamentals of Building Climate-Conscious Products
For entrepreneurs, product creators, and business leaders -- build products that solve for customer needs while minimizing environmental impact. Learn how to apply the 🌎 Product-Market-Earth Fit framework 🌎. 25% off registration w/code CAT
Mon Mar 10 2025 - Climate Action Week Sydney CAWSYD'25
March 10-16 2025 Mobilising All-of-Society Climate Action; Protecting and Leveraging Nature; Supporting the Industrial Transition; Sustainable and Resilient Cities; Financing a Viable Future and Regenerative Futures #CAWSYD'25
📰 News Highlights
Fast Company: Why Sasha Luccioni wants to create Energy Star ratings for AI
Luccioni and friends are now working on a project that grades different types of AI models based on their energy efficiency.
Luccioni is now working on a project that grades different types of AI models based on their energy efficiency. She envisions it as being similar to the EPA's Energy Star Rating system for appliances—a way of talking about AI's impact without having to discuss kilowatt hours and other terms that make most non-scientists' eyes glaze over. Her goal is to encourage people to use the "right model for the right task," rather than defaulting to the largest and, therefore, most power-hungry LLMs to carry out small requests. "People still don't understand that there's a materiality to AI," Luccioni says. "I feel compelled to make people understand that when they use ChatGPT like a calculator, that comes with a cost to the planet."
LinkedIn: Green IO Paris Conference 2024
Through this post, I aim to share key takeaways and actionable insights from the event. The conference site Paris Conference Dec. 3rd, 4th and 5th 2024 offers access to presentation slides from the brilliant speakers, which I encourage you to explore. Here's my very brief and not exhaustive recap of the most valuable lessons I learned.
The Register: Google goes solar as grid can't power its future datacenters
Google believes the US electricity grid can't deliver the energy needed to power datacenters that deliver AI services, so has formed an alliance to build industrial parks powered by clean energy, at which it will build "gigawatts of datacenter capacity" across the nation.
Datacentre Dynamics: Microsoft shareholders reject proposal addressing links with fossil fuel companies
Microsoft shareholders have rejected a resolution that called on the company to address the risks associated with deploying advanced technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI), in the fossil fuel industry.
The resolution was brought by environmental nonprofit As You Sow on behalf of Microsoft shareholders and former employees Will and Holly Alpine. The nonprofit filed the complaint in October, accusing Microsoft of "hypocrisy" for styling itself as a "first mover" on climate change while targeting fossil fuels as AI's most significant growth opportunity.
Computer weekly: Microsoft shares details of plans to reduce water usage of AI datacentres
Microsoft claims to have created a blueprint for how datacentres hosting artificial intelligence (AI) workloads can be designed without needing water for cooling purposes.
The public cloud giant shared details of the design in a blog post that further claims its design could eradicate the need for its datacentres to consume more than 125 million litres of water to keep them cool
Carbon Brief: Analysis - How the UK plans to reach clean power by 2030
The UK government has set out an "action plan" for reaching its target of clean power by 2030, which it describes as "the most ambitious reforms to our energy system in generations".
The plan outlines how the government hopes to "make Britain a clean energy superpower to cut bills, create jobs and deliver security with cheaper, zero-carbon electricity by 2030".
Here, Carbon Brief explains the background to the clean power 2030 target, initial steps already taken by the government, the proposals in the new action plan and what comes next.
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. Remember: if you're looking for advice finding a role, check our #climate-careers channel.
https://diesl.eu/open-position-postdoctoral-researcher-erc-geocloud/
Green Angel Ventures - Support and Development Engineer - £24,000 - £28,000 - Permanent - Totally remote
Green Angel Ventures is the reference early stage investor for UK climate innovation. We specialise in the fight against climate change.
The Support and Development Engineer is responsible for maintaining and improving IT systems and processes, for helping build them to support future growth, and for supporting our staff members. The role is quite broad, and will change over time.
Elemental Impact - Entrepreneur in Residence: Community Impact (Contractor) - $150/hr - Contract - Flexible - remote ok
We are looking for someone who is deeply knowledgeable about the experience of building a responsible community engagement practice in or for a climate tech company or similar context within corporate, and who can be a diligent partner for our entrepreneurs!
Icebreaker One - Senior Account Manager - Up to £600/day, up to 3 days/wk until April 2025 with option to extend - Contract - Totally remote
IB1 is a non-profit with a mission to make data work harder to deliver net-zero outcomes. We convene stakeholders across sectors to develop systems of data governance called Trust Frameworks. These increase trust in decision-critical data in order for money and resources to be deployed more confidently to accelerate decarbonisation and boost biodiversity.
The Senior Account Manager is responsible for identifying, targeting and landing sales then implementing excellent customer service to clients and members to ensure exceptional delivery that builds long term relationships and secures repeated renewals
Commons - Lead Front-end Engineer - Levels 3-6, $129K – $205K • 0.1% – 0.25% - Permanent - Flexible - remote ok
We're looking for a lead front-end engineer who has experience building ReactJS consumer-facing software. We're looking for someone who loves building delightful user experiences and will be responsible for design and delivery of some of Commons' most important features.
Othersphere - Sales and Business Development Manager - $80-100k per year base, plus commissions - Contract - Totally remote
Othersphere identifies the most profitable and sustainable locations for deployment of zero / low GHG industrial technologies. We are seeking an experienced SaS sales professional with 5+ years of business development and sales experience. Ideally you will have worked with industrial sectors, and are excited to learn about those where you haven’t. You will work closely with the Chief Executive Officer and Chief Product Officer to enhance our capacity to engage with potential customers.
Digital Economic Security Lab - Postdoctoral researcher, ERC GEOCLOUD project (3+1 years) - 4-4.2k EUR per month - Contract - Onsite only
Professor Vili Lehdonvirta is hiring a postdoctoral researcher with quantitative analysis skills to work on GEOCLOUD: The Geopolitics of Cloud Computing, a new European Research Council Advanced Grant project. Outsourcing computation to cloud providers can be economically efficient while at the same time generating new systemic risks and dependencies that governments try to manage. GEOCLOUD is concerned with mapping the changing geography of computational infrastructures and understanding how it is shaped by the interaction of technology companies’ business interests and states’ economic and security interests
Support our work
You can support us financially on Open Collective.