🌍 CAT Newsletter 320 - 2026-06-14
Hey CATs,
Welcome to issue 320 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.
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Stay curious 😌💚🐱
CAT Community News
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📅 CAT events (see all)
Local events were shared in #local-bristol and #local-london (a few CATs will be at the SustainableIT Impact Summit at London Climate Action Week on June 23rd)
And in #local-netherlands CATs are reflecting about Green IO Amsterdam
🍩 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, June 19th. More info
Media, events, and news
▶️ CAT videos
10-15 minute videos providing accessible explainers to climate related issues.
TED Talks: The Wildlife Sanctuary You Can Visit from Anywhere
Maya Higa is on a mission to use the internet to build the next generation of conservationists. Her virtual education center, Alveus Sanctuary, is one of the most-watched sanctuaries on Earth, with dozens of rescued animals and cameras livestreaming to a community of millions inspired to help protect wildlife. Visit with Bean the Hawk, Winnie the Moo and more — and see what the future of conservation looks like.
🎤 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!
Environment Variables: Turning Green Standards into Code
This Week in Green Software, hosts Kate and Tzviya explore how green software is moving from theory to practice, highlighting new reference implementations for measuring Software Carbon Intensity in AI workloads and progress toward standardizing SCI for Web. They also examine the growing energy demands of AI and data centers, discuss the role of policy and awareness in driving change, and reflect on why practical tools and real-world examples are essential for turning sustainability goals into everyday engineering decisions.
Euronews Tech Talks: How AI and satellites can help protect our oceans
On the occasion of World Oceans Day (8 June), Euronews Tech Talks explores how satellites and artificial intelligence can contribute to ocean monitoring and protection with Alain Arnaud, director of the digital ocean programme at the French-based organisation Mercator Ocean International.
Mercator's flagship product is the European Digital Twin Ocean (EDITO), a virtual replica of the ocean, accessible online and free of charge. The project is set to become fully operational by 2030, but how does it work?
Tech Life: Tackling lithium battery fires on planes
When we fly we love to take our gadgets with us. But the lithium batteries that power them can catch fire. We find out about a new campaign urging us to pack with safety in mind.
Also this week: the BBC's Lily Jamali visits an international competition for new AI applications in San Francisco. And protecting Africa's endangered wildlife is an increasingly high-tech business - a new scheme aims to give conservation workers the latest skills.
This Machine Kills: DC3 - The Terraforming
Episode 3 of the podcast's analysis of the data center industry, the opposition to these hyperscale projects, and the real impacts on social communities and natural ecosystems. We get into the industry playbook of using "counterinsurgency tactics" to undermine opposition to these data centers and the ideological playbook of effective altruists treating these projects like they are just 4X strategy games. Plus how Mr. Wonderful is terraforming Utah by building a massive natural gas power plant to fuel a hyperscale data center right on the shores of the Great Salt Lake.
BetaTalk: Can We Automate Whole-Home Energy?
How do you scale residential Energy as a Service (EaaS) without upfront capital? E.ON and Podero's 18-home Midlands pilot demonstrates that combining automated zero-upfront multi-asset orchestration (heat pumps, solar PV, batteries, and EV chargers) into a single 10-year fixed tariff wrapper can achieve a +56 Net Promoter Score and stable household comfort. However, scaling this model to a broader target market of 680,000 homes depends entirely on overcoming physical installation bottlenecks, correcting widespread heat pump commissioning errors, and transitioning manufacturer software platforms from standalone thermodynamic efficiency (COP) toward predictive, time-of-use cost-curve steering.
Odd Lots: Anjney Midha's Plan to Radically Lower the Price of Compute
Anjney Midha wrote the first check to Anthropic. He teaches a viral course at Stanford on how AI works. And he was, until recently, a partner at a16z. In other words, he is AI-industry royalty. Midha's new project is AMP PBC, a company that believes it can radically lower the price of compute. To accomplish that, he is working on building a compute grid that turns GPUs into a standardized utility. But right now, compute is too fragmented. It's too heterogeneous. And given the way contracts are structured, he says that labs are being forced to spend money on capacity that often goes unused. In other words, small labs are forced to pay up for big, long-term contracts, even though their own demand (particularly during model training) may be very spiky. On this episode, Midha explains how the market for compute currently works and why he believes there's a software solution that could significantly improve compute utilization. He also tells us why he does not anticipate one company will emerge as the dominate player and that instead we'll have a wide range of models, each optimally used in specific applications.
📅 Submitted events
Want an event listed here? Use this event listing form to submit the details so we can add it in the newsletter.
Wednesday Jun 17, 2026 - Who's Going to Save Us From the Energy Use of AI? You Are.
Anne Currie will be speaking about the rising energy consumption of AI and the ways software practitioners can impact this on a local and global level.
Wednesday Jun 17, 2026 - NASA Space to Soil Pitch Event
Join us at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. on June 17th. Finalist teams will present small satellite solutions for agriculture and forestry innovation as they compete for up to $400,000 in total prizes. 💰 The free event also features a panel and networking reception.
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 London’s unparalleled ecosystem of climate and non-climate organisations to accelerate global climate action and supports action in London.
Tuesday Jun 23, 2026 - Sustainable IT Impact Summit
Green IT isn't just compliance—it's a growth driver. At the 2026 Sustainable IT Impact Summit, leaders explore building the business case for sustainable IT, cutting costs via circular tech, deploying responsible AI, and turning sustainability into lasting business value.
📰 News Highlights
Datacenter Dynamics: Amazon data centers used 2.5bn gallons of water in 2025
Amazon's data centers consumed 2.5 billion gallons of water last year, the company said.
At the facilities the company owns and operates directly, the total amount of water Amazon withdrew decreased two percent from 2024 to 2025, despite the number of data centers increasing. The company did not disclose any change in water usage at the sites it leases.
Yahoo!: New York lawmakers pass one-year moratorium on large data center permits
New York's legislature approved a one-year moratorium on new environmental permits for large data centers with peak demand of 20 megawatts or more, making it the first statewide data center moratorium in the country.
The Conversation: AI in nature conservation - powerful tool or dangerous shortcut?
Conservationists analyse overwhelming volumes of ecological data in their work. For example, they might need to process decades of weather data or the movements of millions of insects. Up until now, these scientists and decision makers have had to manually find and sort information, then use statistical tools which often oversimplify the source information.
Artificial intelligence (AI) tools now promise to help with all that. But can they deliver on the promise?
Pan-African Visions: GCF, Government of Zimbabwe and UNDP Partnership Introduces Labour-Saving Technologies to Strengthen Women's Climate Resilience
Rural women farmers across southern Zimbabwe are benefiting from labour-saving technologies introduced through the Climate Resilient Livelihoods Project, a partnership between the Green Climate Fund (GCF), the Government of Zimbabwe and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
The CoolDown: Petition to ban bitcoin in Europe over energy use sets off heated debate
An online petition is reviving a familiar fight over bitcoin in Europe. The initiative questions whether the world's largest cryptocurrency is an innovation worth keeping or an energy drain the climate can't afford.
Banking News: Space debris may cause extreme climate change
Russian scientists have discovered that tiny fragments of space debris could affect Earth's climate. For the first time worldwide, researchers have conducted a quantitative assessment of how small artificial particles in orbit weaken the solar radiation that reaches the planet.
ABC: NSW government funds Aboriginal-led south coast sea urchin enterprise with $1.48m grant
Two Walbunja divers who were facing jail time for cultural fishing are now training to be professional sea urchin divers as part of an Aboriginal-led sea country restoration plan on the NSW south coast.
The NSW government is supporting the plan with a $1.48 million investment.
💚 Papers We Love 💚
Cornell University: Streaming the future of sustainability
The rapid growth of digital video traffic presents both chal lenges and opportunities for sustainable content delivery. This paper will argue that the shift towards on-demand streaming, exemplified by services like Netflix, provides a path to significantly reduce the carbon footprint and e-waste associated with traditional computing paradigms. By eliminating the need for local operating systems, enabling more efficient edge devices, and leveraging renewable-powered cloud infrastructure, streaming on-demand hardware and content can drive down energy use and embodied emissions.
💼 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.
King's College London - Postdoctoral Research Associate in Human-Computer Interaction - £45,031 - £52,514 per annum - Contract - Flexible - remote ok
Applications are invited for a Postdoctoral Research Associate (PDRA) position on the EPSRC project “User-centred Eco-feedback For AI’s Environmental Impact” led by KCL and in collaboration with partner organisations. This project will bring an empirical and human-centred perspective to the ongoing discourse on the environmental impact of AI systems, complementing and extending existing research which currently focuses on energy and water metrics and measurements.
Candidates should hold a PhD in HCI, Computer Science or a related discipline and demonstrate skills in sustainable computing, sustainable HCI and/or AI deployment. Experience in conducting participatory design research would be advantageous.
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