š CAT Newsletter 312- 2026-04-19
Hey CATs,
Welcome to issue 312 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.
Remember you can unsubscribe from this newsletter at any time - the link is at the bottom.
Stay curious ššš±
CAT Community News
š«µ Looking for a new Events Organiser
What you'll do: Set the strategy and direction for our events infrastructure as well as execution/facilitation and maintenance with volunteers and other organisers
What's in it for you: Experience planning and running events, volunteer management and strategy creation. A place to put your passion for event management into action all while volunteering with a lovely team for a climate-focussed community.
Read more about the role | Apply or nominate someone
We're also looking for smaller volunteer roles to be filledto join us for 6 months:
- š¦ŗ Moderation lead: Coordinate and respond to Code of Conduct incidents or spam, refresh our community principles | You gain experience with community moderation, writing, and volunteer management
- š© Slack moderator: Identify and respond to Code of Conduct incidents or spam, share ideas for improving our documentation | You gain experience with community moderation
- š Mini Grants program lead: Lead the volunteer team, run our quarterly evaluation meetings, and keep the community up to date | You gain experience with program leadership and volunteer management
Apply by sending a message in #cat-volunteer-interest
#ļøā£ Slack conversation highlights
#cat-book-club: S shared a YouTube video titled The Empire of AI and the Fight for Our Future. Have a watch and share your thoughts in the thread
#greener-ai: After reading a LinkedIn post by B which talks about the effective cost per kilowatt hour that people pay for inference, C is wondering if there's a much larger margin associated with the cost of inference orĀ if it's a sudden, massive hike in costs in the supply chain. Anyone have any ideas? Share your thoughts
#2-greener-tech: A was faced with a rejection for greener webdev work from a climate solutions consultancy with the argument that "AI is far more damaging to the environment than my website." Have you experienced something similar? "Leaders" rejecting company/personal digital sustainability? Share your thoughts
Local events were shared in #local-california, #local-london, and #local-san-francisco-bay-area
š© Community networking
Every 2 weeks, we match 2-3 CATs so you can connect over a quick 30-minute call. JoinĀ #cat-roulette, pick your region and wait for a message fromĀ Donut. The next round of matches will go out onĀ Fri, Apr 24th.Ā More info
Media, events, and news
ā¶ļø CAT videos
10-15 minute videos providing accessible explainers to climate related issues.
Malala Yousafzai: What I Got Wrong About Changing the World
Malala Yousafzai has spent her life advocating for girls' education ā surviving an assassination attempt at 15, meeting with world leaders and then watching hard-won progress collapse when Afghanistan fell to the Taliban in 2021. That moment of despair forced her to completely rethink what it means to create change, and what she discovered replaced her shattered optimism with something more powerful and more honest. Hear how to keep fighting for the future you want, even when hope feels lost.
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 - and there's a full playlist of all the podcast episodes shared in this newsletter this year so far, on ListenNotes - catch up with last year's here!
Asynchronous & Unreliable: AI & Rust - The Perfect Marriage?
When it comes to AI, it turns out being chatty and opinionated is a good thing - in a compiler.
Environment Variables: Green AI Tradeoffs
Host Kate GoldenringĀ is joined by Chris Adams to explore how the Software Carbon Intensity (SCI) standard can help companies meet new EU sustainability reporting requirements, shifting green software from best practice to audited obligation. They also discuss research on "green prompting," showing that specific words can significantly impact AI energy use, along with new tools that reveal real-time energy consumption in AI workflows. They close by examining how rising AI demand is increasing hardware costs and disrupting the refurbished laptop market.
Zero, The Climate Race: Caution, not ambition, will shape the next decade of climate action
In the past month, we've seen two major plans from two of the world's biggest polluters. In March, China approved its 15th five-year plan, which gave us a clearer sense of how the government makes progress on its climate goals. A few weeks after that, India published its climate plan for 2035. This week on Zero, Bloomberg Green's Lili Pike and Akshat Rathi discuss those climate plans, and whether they're ambitious enough for the current moment.Ā
Green IO: The dilemma of using AI for sustainable software engineers, with Natasha Ann Lum
Do software engineers still have the choice of not using AI? The numbers speak volumes and the short answer is ...no. For the environmentally-aware developer, this is a daily dilemma.\n\nIn this episode of Green IO, Gaƫl is joined by Natasha Ann Lum, co-founder of the RagTech podcast and MC at Green IO Singapore 2026. She practices AI-assisted coding every day. But here's the catch - she's doing so by 'embracing the discomfort of AI', warts and all. That means jumping in, finding the relevant use cases for AI in her daily workflow, and mitigating its costs.\n\nNatasha's approach comes from a place of advocacy that many other responsible technologists can relate to; data sovereignty, minimising environmental impacts and finding ways to speak truth to power. And behind it all is a decision-making framework that threads everything together.
The Climate Question: Earthquakes and climate change
Earthquakes are caused by a sudden release of stress along faults in the earth's crust, not by climate change, but some new studies suggest that melting glaciers and permafrost may influence when, where and how often seismic activity occurs.
In this episode, hosts Graihagh Jackson and Jordan Dunbar chat to seismologist Dr. Verena Simon from the Swiss Seismology Service and Associate Professor of Geosciences at Colorado State University, Sean Gallen.
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.
Tuesday Apr 21, 2026 - Product-Market-Earth Fit: The Missing Layer of Modern Product Strategy
What if Product-Market Fit isnāt enough? Learn how to design products that reduce emissions and drive growth. A practical 75-min workshop on Product-Market-Earth Fit with real case studies, frameworks, and ideas you can test next sprint.
Wednesday Apr 22, 2026 - The Carbon Market Emerging Beneath AI
āA timely conversation about carbon removal during San Francisco Climate Week - at a gorgeous private residence. This event brings together AI founders, engineers and investors who care about climate and want to get involved in CDR.
Wednesday Apr 22, 2026 - Climate Tech Time
Climate Tech Time is the UKās largest monthly gathering for climate tech. We bring together 150+ investors, startups, government and climate enthusiasts for meaningful conversations.
Saturday Apr 25, 2026 - Warren Farm Nature Reserve Bioblitz šæ In Person Event ā 25 April Apr 25
Be part of the City Nature Challenge 2026 and help put London on the biodiversity map!
Wednesday May 06, 2026 - Snackable Skills Workshop | Growth without the Footprint: 3 Models to Unlock Value from Underutilized Resources
Free workshop: Growth Without the Footprint. Learn 3 models for turning underutilized resources into new value, without growing emissions. Led by Renee Davis, ClimateTech CPO. Wed May 6, 3pm ET.
Thursday May 14, 2026 - Founders Connect
An event laser-focused on founders to tap into incredible resources and free advice from experts through 7 types of office hours (legal, branding, fundraising), founder fireside chats, and problem-solving workshops.
Wednesday May 20, 2026 - Climate Tech Time
Climate Tech Time is the UKās largest monthly gathering for climate tech. We bring together 150+ investors, startups, government and climate enthusiasts for meaningful conversations.
Thursday May 21, 2026 - The Reverse Pitch: Climate VCs in the Hot Seat
In a playful turn of events, the VCs will be taking the stage to pitch themselves to the room. After presenting, each VC will be put on the spot by a panel of founders, answering the questions founders care about, live on stage. Anyone in the ecosystem is welcome to join!
Friday Jun 19, 2026 - Pixel Pioneers Bristol
Pixel Pioneers, a conference for front-end developers and UX/UI designers, this year features a talk on designing and building for the low-carbon web. Sustainable web designer & developer Nick Lewis will explore how to reduce the footprint of our digital products and services.
Saturday Jun 20, 2026 - London Climate Action Week
London Climate Action Week harnesses the unique power of London for global and local climate action.
Mobilising Londonās unparalleled ecosystem of climate and non-climate organisations to accelerate global climate action and supports action in London.
š° News Highlights
Tech.EU: German sustainability software outfit osapiens becomes unicorn, following $100M raise
German startupĀ osapiens,Ā which providesĀ software-as-a-service (SaaS) services to help companies meet ESG targets, says it has become a unicorn after raising $100m.
DevOps.Com The Green Side of Observability -Why Less Data Can Mean More Insight
When we think about sustainability in software, the conversation often revolves around efficient algorithms, optimized cloud usage, or energy-conscious infrastructure. Rarely do we consider observability, the practice that allows us to understand systems, maintain reliability, and troubleshoot issues, as part of the equation. Yet every metric collected, every log retained, and every dashboard query consumes energy. At scale, this translates into a measurable carbon footprint.
Smithsonian Magazine: Can Scientists Harness the Magic of Mushrooms to Clean Up Polluted Landscapes?
Persistent human-made chemicals called chlorophenols are used to manufacture products like pharmaceuticals, agricultural chemicals and dyes that eventually become hazardous pollutants. Those byproducts can remain in the environment after serving their industrial purposes, contaminating soil and posing a threat to both environmental and human health.
Scientists' first inkling that fungi could help solve the problems caused by these pollutants came in 1963: the enzymes white rot fungi use to degrade lignināa complex polymer found in and between plants' cell wallsācould also be used to break down chlorophenols.
ORF Middle East: Climate Change, The Silent Casualty of War
The US-Israel-Iran War has emitted large greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere, setting the scene for accelerated climate change impacts in the Middle East going into the future.
The use of military equipment and strikes on oil facilities and other infrastructure in the region has resulted in dire environmental, agricultural, and public health consequences
Moeve Global: Why do oceans hold the key to stabilizing the global climate?
The seas and oceans act as natural regulators, automatically keeping the planet in balance.Ā They'reĀ also the lungs that supply the Earth with oxygen.Ā Ultimately, they'reĀ the world's greatest automatic control system forĀ maintainingĀ environmental balance, andĀ they'reĀ essential to sustainability, marine (and terrestrial) biodiversity, and climate mitigation.
HeatMap: Stretching the Limits of Climate Tech
It's been a busy week for funding, with several high-profile deals, including Slate Auto's $650 million fundraise for its stripped-down electric truck and Rivian's partnership with Redwood Materials to repurpose the electric automaker's battery packs for grid-scale storage.
These are clearly companies with direct decarbonization implications, but one of the week's other biggest announcements raises the question: Is this really climate tech?
Noticias Ambientales:Birds in Peru adjust their reproduction due to the effects of climate change
In the cloud forests of northern Peru, a surprising behavior has emerged among tropical birds. According to a recent study, these birds are modifying their breeding calendars in an unprecedented way.
šĀ PapersĀ WeĀ LoveĀ š
University of Massachusetts Amherst, MIT, CIT, and University of Waterloo: Learning-Augmented Competitive Algorithms for Spatiotemporal Online Allocation with Deadline Constraints
This paper introduces and studies spatiotemporal online allocation with deadline constraints (š²š®š š£), a new online problem motivated by emerging challenges in sustainability and energy.
š¼ 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.
Natcap - Senior Product Designer - Up to Ā£70K - Permanent - Flexible - remote ok
The world is facing a nature crisis. We have lost 85% of the worldās wetlands, 35% of its forests, and 65% of its living creatures. Action on nature is the next frontier for sustainability, as the world expands beyond a narrow focus on net zero. Natcap is at the forefront of this movement. Natcap is the market leader in Nature Intelligence and has recently raised funding and is poised for significant growth.
Weāre looking for a Senior Product Designer to take ownership of design at Natcap. You will join the team responsible to transform the business from consulting to product-led. Our recently launched product has an established foundation and you will be responsible for raising the quality, consistency, and impact of design across the platform.
This role is both hands-on and strategic: improving what exists, introducing stronger design practices, and helping the product evolve into a more mature, scalable system.
Icebreaker One - Stakeholder Engagement Coordinator - Ā£28k (4-day week, Mon-Thu) - Permanent - Totally remote
Icebreaker Oneās mission is to make data work harder to enable us to live within planetary boundaries. We focus on sector- and market-scale data governance to reduce risk and increase the flow of money and resources into decarbonisation and nature-enhancing initiatives. Fundamental to the success of our programmes is that solutions are developed in collaboration with, by, and for the sectors we support. The Stakeholder Engagement Coordinator will support the Account Manager in maintaining and progressing a pipeline of stakeholder and client relationships, ensuring consistent and timely communication.
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