🌍 CAT Newsletter 294 - 2025-11-16
Hey CATs,
Welcome to issue 294 of the ClimateAction.tech (CAT) Newsletter - your weekly summary of what's happening inside the CAT Slack community (join here and check out our onboarding checklist), and in the wider world of climate and tech.
Join #fosdem for more info on FOSDEM 2026, and to co-ordinate with other CAT members!
Remember you can unsubscribe from this newsletter at any time - the link is at the bottom.
Stay curious 😌💚🐱
CAT Community News
✍️ From the blog: Responsible AI
Missed our Responsible AI Workshop? We've got you covered - facilitator and workshop host @Paolo summarised the themes in our latest blog post: Designing Responsibly in the Age of AI
#️⃣ Slack highlights
#cat-systems-series: S is asking "Should we host a systems thinking co-creation workshop to address the challenge of applying for climate tech jobs?" Interested? Respond to the thread
#3-questions-and-ideas: J asked for must-reads (especially books) regarding the topic of digital sustainability and CATs responded with plenty of recommendations in the thread - reminder: we've also got a CAT books spreadsheet with lots of recommendations
#share-your-work: Lots of CATs are sharing interesting projects and asking for feedback!
#open-source: CATs are discussing switching from Windows to Linux
#greener-ai: M shared an article that discusses that people want transparency and the ability to opt in/out of AI, as many CATs discussed in the Responsible AI workshop
📅 Upcoming CAT events
Thu, Nov 20 - CAT Systems series: Communicating sustainability in tech in the age of AI - more in #cat-systems-series
Dec 9-11 - Green IO Paris [in person] - join as a CAT volunteer by filling out the form in #local-france or get a free ticket by following the instructions here (limited numbers available)
Jan 31 - Feb 1, 2026 - FOSDEM [in person] - join #fosdem for sharing travel plans and event info, or get support if you want to propose a talk
We're planning some local roundtables on the topic of Responsible AI - get involved
🍩 Community networking
Every 2 weeks, we match 2-3 CATs so you can connect over a quick 30-minute call. Join #cat-roulette, pick your region and wait for a message from Donut. The next round of matches will go out on Fri, Nov 28th. More info.
Media, events, and news
😺 CAT recommendations
▶️ CAT videos
10-15 minute videos providing accessible explainers to climate related issues.
Bloomberg Originals: The Real Cost of Our Energy Demand
Electricity demand from artificial intelligence is set to quadruple in a decade, making data centers one of the fastest-growing electricity users on the planet. And many of the communities that use the least energy will suffer the biggest consequences. In this episode of An Optimist's Guide to the Planet, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau explores the true cost of energy use and new innovations that may help civilization adapt. Whether it's harvesting tidal energy to power the Orkney Islands or cooling homes in India without air conditioning, we explore how humanity is working to solve the green energy puzzle.
🎤 Podcasts
The latest climate-related podcast episodes. Don't forget, if you're looking around, there's a list of podcasts maintained by CATs - and there's a full playlist of all the podcast episodes shared in this newsletter in 2025 so far, on ListenNotes.
Techologie: #99 Un journal libre d'enquêtes technocritiques avec Jean-Philippe Peyrache
Jean-Philippe Peyrache est cofondateur de la Brèche, journal libre d'enquêtes, analyses et reportages sur les thèmes environnement, santé publique, technocritique. On discute:
Pourquoi lancer un journal papier qui se positionne sur ces thèmes
Dans quelle forme de technocritique le journal s'inscrit ?
Démarche de "journalisme lent"
Jean-Philippe Peyrache is co-founder of La Brèche, an independent journal featuring investigations, analyses, and reports on environmental issues, public health, and technocriticism. We discuss:
Why launch a print journal that focuses on these topics?
What form of technocriticism does the journal adopt?
The approach of "slow journalism"
Tech Talks: Is An Algorithm Silencing Progressive Voices? That And More From The Floor Of Web Summit Lisbon
Louise Thomas shares her successful fundraising round, confirming AI and health tech are capturing investor attention. Janine Luk and Katerina Chantzi reveal how they navigate the overwhelming conference strategically, prioritizing quality over quantity.
The conversation turns serious as they discuss whether algorithms are actively suppressing DNI and Women in Tech posts, and what builders must do to bring the human element back to technology.
SPRingboard Environmental Law Podcast: Unlocking the Ocean Sink: Permitting and Deployment of Marine Carbon Dioxide Removal Technologies
In the latest episode of the SPRingBoard Environmental Law Podcast, host Michael Hannaman explores one of the most promising and complex frontiers in climate innovation: Marine Carbon Dioxide Removal (mCDR). As global emissions continue to rise and the path to limiting warming to 1.5°C narrows, mCDR technologies are emerging as a key mitigation tool. These technologies leverage the ocean's natural carbon cycle to capture and store CO₂, but questions remain about paths forward to large-scale deployment.
To unpack this topic, Michael is joined by Garrett Boudinot (founder and CEO of Vycarb) and Meg Holden (principal at SPR). Together, they examine the science, economics, and legal frameworks underpinning the mCDR field and discuss the social and environmental considerations that guide deployment.
Catalyst: Driving down the cost of green hydrogen
A few years ago, industry and political leaders embraced hydrogen as a solution to a laundry list of hard-to-abate decarbonization challenges — steel production, ammonia production, and more. But hydrogen failed to come down in costs and policymakers pulled back support. Ultimately, the bubble burst.
So what does it take to drive down the costs of low-carbon hydrogen and rebuild momentum?
📅 Submitted events
Want an event listed here? Use this event listing form to submit the details so we can add it in the newsletter.
📅 CAT Workshop: Designing Responsibly in the Age of AI
Wednesday, October 29th | 16:00 - 17:30 GMT
Zoom 📩 RSVP https://luma.com/2cf0sfmc
Through stories, small-group reflection and hands-on exercises we'll examine and discuss how AI is showing up in our work, and what we can do to shape it with a bit more care, curiosity and conscience. You don't need to be an AI expert (in fact, that's the point). This session is open to the public, invite your colleagues! Led by CAT member Paolo Rizzi, Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability Principal at ustwo.
Tuesday Nov 18, 2025 - Greening AI - a practical guide
AI and sustainability are a conflict – but they don't have to be. There are many strategies and techniques for making AI more climate-friendly and resource-efficient. At the next meetup, we will learn a practical guide on how to make this happen, from planning to implementation.
Wednesday Nov 19, 2025 - Using AI to make websites more efficient
A talk on experimenting with AI to superscale images client-side, reducing web page download sizes
Monday Dec 01, 2025 - SOSV's Robotics VC-Founder Matchup
Join us Dec 1-5 for a free virtual robotics investment event. 500 startups meet 500 investors for 1:1 meetings. Hosted by SOSV, connect emerging robotics innovators with capital to scale. Register: https://sosv.com/announcing-sosvs-vc-founder-robotics-matchup-dec-1-5/
Tuesday Dec 09, 2025 - Green IO Paris 2025
Green IO is where Tech leaders join forces to overcome unprecedented sustainability challenges in IT. The theme of the 2025 edition is "Building Europe of Green IT". The "crème de la crème" of European thought leaders in Tech Sustainability will be there to share & network!
Thursday Dec 11, 2025 - Startup Tank: Climate Edition
Join us for the next edition of 4WARD's Startup Tank Climate Investor Pitch — the premier platform where vetted climate tech founders pitch live to a global panel of leading climate VCs and investors.
📰 News Highlights
University of Edinburgh: COP websites bigger emitters than average pages
Ahead of this year's United Nations climate summit, COP30, researchers have revealed a sharp increase in the carbon emissions generated by the conference's websites over time. Edinburgh researchers analysed web archive data to assess changes in the carbon footprint of COP websites over a 30-year period.
ComputerWeekly: Simplify IT, save money and carbon - The rise of the minimalist CIO
With the link between IT over-consumption and carbon emissions now firmly established, an analyst from Gartner sets out how CIOs can counter this trend by taking a more "minimalist" stance on IT projects and spend. Across industries, years of layered transformation have left organisations running tangled architectures, overlapping platforms, and neglected legacy systems. Each new layer consumes more compute, storage, and power, adding to the hidden environmental and financial costs of digital growth.
Global Energy Prize: New technology of continuous monitoring of emissions based on IoT and blockchain
Researchers from Indian Engineering and Technology College, Vilnius Technical University named after Gediminas and Budapest University of Technologies and Economics developed an intelligent system for car emissions monitoring. It is based on the continuity principle: instead of one-off inspections at the vehicle inspection stations, the car can independently continuously transmit data about the emissions composition, and the measurements recordings are protected and cannot be changed afterwards.
Diginomica: Swisscom automates Scope 3 emissions data collection across 3,000 suppliers. Here's how it cut carbon by 10%
Swiss telecommunications company Swisscom has replaced multiple spreadsheets with a single carbon management platform to track emissions across its supply chain. The system aggregates data from over 3,000 suppliers and uses industry benchmarks where specific emissions data is unavailable.
edie: Global Action Hub launched at COP30 to curb AI's environmental impact
Leaders from governments, international organisations and the technology sector have launched a new global platform to tackle the environmental impact of artificial intelligence (AI) and other digital technologies.
Technology Networks: Roadmap Shows the Environmental Impact of the AI Data Center Boom
As the everyday use of AI has exploded in recent years, so have the energy demands of the computing infrastructure that supports it. But the environmental toll of these large data centers, which suck up gigawatts of power and require vast amounts of water for cooling, has been too diffuse and difficult to quantify.
Now, Cornell researchers have used advanced data analytics – and, naturally, some AI, too – to create a state-by-state look at that environmental impact
💚 Papers We Love 💚
Columbia University: Energy-Aware Process Scheduling in Linux
Datacenters are becoming one of the most significant worldwide consumers of electricity and sources of carbon emissions. With the end of Dennard's scaling, and as cloud datacenter power usage effectiveness becomes close to optimal, we can no longer rely on hardware advancements alone to sustainably meet growing computational needs. This paper represents a first step in making the operating system energy-aware, and demonstrating how that capability can be used to control applications' energy consumption.
💼 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.
4WARD.earth - Multiple - 0 - Volunteer - Totally remote
4WARD is a global climate & sustainability community spanning 60+ cities with 1000s of online members.
We unite changemakers to drive climate action through collaboration. We're seeking passionate volunteers to help build our platform & community movement.
City and Local Events Volunteer Roles:
🎪 VP of Global Events & Communities - Scale community initiatives, manage regional leads, and track performance to grow the 4WARD ecosystem globally
🌏 APAC Regional Manager - Support regional community growth and coordinate impactful events across Asia-Pacific cities
🌱 Regional Community & Events Assistant - Bridge local City Leads with regional management while organizing in-person climate community events
🎯 Local Leader Recruiter & Expansion Coordinator - Recruit and onboard city leads globally, growing local communities and transitioning relationships to regional managers
Apply: https://4ward.earth/volunteer
4WARD.earth - Multiple - 0 - Volunteer - Totally remote
4WARD is a global climate & sustainability community spanning 60+ cities with 1000s of online members.
We unite changemakers to drive climate action through collaboration. We're seeking passionate volunteers to help build our platform & community movement.
Consulting and Revenue Volunteer Roles:
🚀 Head of 4WARD Startup/Scale-up Consulting & Services - Build our consulting practice by recruiting experts, acquiring clients, and delivering impactful climate strategies
💼 SDR / Sales & Business Development for Consulting Arm - Generate leads, manage CRM outreach, and grow revenue opportunities for climate consulting services
📊 Head of Strategy & Revenue - Lead business model development, test revenue streams, and build sustainable financial growth through strategic partnerships
Apply: https://4ward.earth/volunteer
4WARD.earth - Multiple - 0 - Volunteer - Totally remote
4WARD is a global climate & sustainability community spanning 60+ cities with 1000s of online members.
We unite changemakers to drive climate action through collaboration. We're seeking passionate volunteers to help build our platform & community movement.
Team and Admin Volunteer Roles:
👥 Head of People & HR - Lead recruiting, mentor the interview team, and build company culture while establishing local hubs worldwide
🤝 Head of Partnerships - Build strategic partnership ecosystem, secure collaborations, and manage cross-promotional climate initiatives
🏆 Head of Membership Program - Design freemium model, create member experiences, and grow our community of thousands of climate leaders
💎 Community Membership Manager - Connect with members, support onboarding on Circle platform, and strengthen ecosystem through engagement and collaboration
Apply Now: https://4ward.earth/volunteer
Right to Repair Europe - Campaign Manager - €4,000–€4,250/month - Contract - Onsite only
The Campaign Manager of Right to Repair Europe serves as the strategist, spokesperson, and operational manager for the coalition advocating for the right to repair at the European level. The primary goal is to ensure that EU policy and legislation are adopted and robustly implemented to make repair affordable, accessible, and mainstream for consumers and repair businesses.
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