Hey CATs,

Welcome to issue 324 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 😌💚🐱

CAT Community News

#️⃣ Slack channel highlights

#3-questions-and-ideas: S is wondering... what are the biggest challenges you face in keeping your sites up-to-date and sustainable? Things like content updates, technical maintenance, web sustainability knowledge, or just finding the time?

#greener-ai: L shared a project where someone mapped data centers, gas pipeline infrastructures, and the number of schools and hospitals that are in harms' reach across the US

#local-london: CATs have been sharing reflections from London Climate Action Week and M recommended the next Green Software Brighton event on July 15 'Where did all your tokens go?'

❤️ Help a CAT

T is looking for alternatives to ML.Energy leaderboard and EcoLogits methodology to estimate the energy use of LLMs. Share your recommendations

A is looking for any resources that might help get an estimate for the carbon footprint of using Figma - per user or per project. Share your resources

🍩 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, July 17th. More info

Media, events, and news

▶️ CAT videos

10-15 minute videos providing accessible explainers to climate related issues.

Planet A: The race to mine the last untouched places has begun

As countries race to secure critical minerals for the green tech transition, like cobalt, platinum and rare earth elements, both deep sea and deep space mining are quickly going from science fiction to reality. Which one will supply the materials of the future, and will journeying into the abyss below - or above - solve our problems, or create new and unfixable ones?

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!

The Clarity Mandate: How the AI Boom Is Draining the Emerging World

AI companies absorbed $259 billion in venture capital last year — 61% of every VC dollar on Earth — and three-quarters of it landed in the United States. So what happens to everyone else?

Dr. Vivian Atud follows the money from Silicon Valley to Lagos, Accra, and Luanda — where a quiet revolution in pension funds, development finance, and venture debt is building something more durable than a funding boom: capital sovereignty.

Environment Variables: The AI Water Management Challenge with Masheika Allgood

This Week, hosts Tzviya and Kate are joined by AI ethicist Masheika Allgood to discuss the growing environmental impact of AI data centres through the lens of water use. Drawing on a new case study from Georgia, the conversation explores how communities can better understand the local effects of AI infrastructure, why transparency and public engagement matter, and what policymakers, developers, and residents should consider before new data centres are built. 

The Saturday Salon: Why the Economy is a Subset of Nature

In this profoundly moving and far-reaching conversation, host Soulaima Gourani sits down with environmental finance pioneer, policy advisor, and entrepreneur, Swapan Mehra.

Together, they explore the friction between economic extraction and ecological restoration, the strategic integration of nature onto corporate balance sheets, and what it truly means to survive the rapid degradation of our planetary biosphere.

Catalyst: How data centers are complicating transmission expansion

Electric transmission development is notoriously difficult, and these days, NIMBYism gets the brunt of the blame. But as data center loads surge and electricity prices climb, there’s a new roadblock –  the messy world of multi-state cost allocation.

The Mid-Atlantic Resiliency Link (MARL) was approved by PJM in 2022 under standard rules that spread costs across the entire region. But that plan was made before ChatGPT took off and data center forecasts shot upwards. In this episode, Shayle sits down with Maeve Allsup, senior reporter at Latitude Media, to unpack her reporting on the project. They dive into how the rise of generative AI has disrupted traditional grid planning and explore why this challenge has proven to be such an impactful rate limiter for the AI boom.

The Times Tech Podcast: Can beautifying data centres save them from backlash?

AI needs vast data centres to power it but communities around the world are increasingly pushing back against the large, ugly “sheds” appearing on their doorsteps.

In the US, one proposed Utah data centre is set to be larger than Manhattan. Meanwhile, architects in the UK are looking at ways to make data centres more attractive, functional and useful to local communities. So Danny Fortson and Katie Prescott ask whether better design, waste-heat reuse and local benefits could make AI infrastructure more acceptable.

The Future of Solar Photovoltaics: William Fraser on Habitat, Biodiversity and the UK's Largest Solar Farm

The Future of Solar Photovoltaics podcast heads to Tower 42 for a super series on the Heathcote Holdings Group and the people driving solar forward in the UK. In this episode, Vikram Kumar talks to Will Fraser, who runs Habitat Regeneration, the ecological and land management arm of the group, about what actually happens to the land under and around a giant solar farm.

📅 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 Jul 15, 2026 - Where did all your tokens go?

Annie Freeman will talk about tracking AI token usage with telemetry and comparing performance of different prompting techniques to minimise token use and maximise value.

Tuesday Aug 04, 2026 - Make It Count: Sustainability Communication Workshop

Professionals from any sector can join Make it Count: Sustainability Communication Workshop.

Learn and put into practice the behavioural science behind making every sustainability conversation count!

** News Highlights**

India Sentinels: Why women will decide the success of India’s clean energy transition, experts at India-Germany climate talks explain

Women must be recognized as innovators, entrepreneurs, researchers, community leaders and decision-makers if India’s clean energy transition is to succeed, experts said at the latest edition of the India-Germany climate talks, hosted by the German embassy in New Delhi on Thursday.

The Guardian: Europe’s largest datacentre hub leaves town sweltering

Emerging research suggests datacentres create a heat island effect, pushing up temperatures in the immediate vicinity by as much as 9C

Mashable: Google AI breakthrough shows why we don't need more data centers

We have seen the future of AI via Large Language Models. And it's smaller than you think.

That much was clear in 2025, when we first saw China's DeepSeek — but the trend towards smaller and smarter AI isn't going away. The evolution is on display again in TurboQuant, a compression algorithm that Google quietly unveiled this week via a Google Research paper.

RFI: Brazil deforestation hits new low in Amazon

Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon fell to its lowest level in a decade in the first half of the year, according to official figures released Friday.

Audubon: These 5 Research Projects Show How AI Is Revolutionizing Bird Conservation

Scientists are using artificial intelligence to analyze troves of images and audio, gaining unprecedented insight into the lives of birds and how to more effectively protect them.

Oceanographic: The UK has finally ratified the High Seas Treaty... now the hard part

The UK has formally ratified the High Seas Treaty, unlocking its role in establishing marine protected areas across international waters for the first time and supporting the global 30by30 ocean protection target.

ISP Review: Vodafone Trials New Energy-Saving 5G Mobile Antennas and Software

Mobile network operator Vodafone has revealed that, in an “industry-first“, they’ve managed to achieve energy-savings of up to 10% using new software and hardware-based power saving techniques, as well as an additional 20% reduction with next generation radios.

💚 Papers We Love 💚

Hong Kong Polytechnic University: A Thermal-aware Workload Scheduler for High-performance LLM

The wide deployment of AI datacenters has led to an increasing demand for energy. Recently, there have been developments in the area of reference cooling temperatures in datacenter server rooms, with the aim of avoiding the setting of excessively low temperatures to save energy.

The team show that in cooling-regulated datacenters, existing schedulers can increase the probability of thermal throttling by 10 times, and the performance degradation can be as much as 34.2%. They develop a new thermal-aware workload scheduler, TAWS, which takes into consideration the GPU voltage and frequency.

💼 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.

Boundless Impact Research & Analytics - Research Associate - $20/hr - Permanent - Flexible - remote ok

Boundless Impact Research & Analytics provides precise life cycle and techno-economic impact data for advanced technology companies, sustainable brands, and investors. Our analytics validate and differentiate sustainable products, reduce investment risk, and support credible reporting. Boundless blends science-based impact analysis, industry-specific benchmarks, and AI-driven data to deliver the insights companies need to prove their impact and thrive in the market.

Boundless Impact Research & Analytics (Boundless) is seeking a full-time Research Associate with environmental analysis and research experience, and an interest in and aptitude for applying Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Techno-Economic Analysis (TEA) to clean energy and other advanced technologies. The Research Associate will support the Boundless research team across sustainability performance analysis projects (using LCA and TEA).

Farmxic UK Limited - Multiple - 28000 - 35000 - Contract - Flexible - remote ok

At FarmXic UK Limited, we're building AI-powered tools that help farmers adapt to climate change while reducing the environmental footprint of food production.

Agriculture accounts for a significant share of global greenhouse gas emissions, yet farmers often lack access to real-time, data-driven tools to optimise soil health, water use, nutrient management, and climate resilience. Our flagship platform, SoilSense AI, combines environmental sensing, predictive analytics, and digital agronomy to help growers make better decisions that improve productivity while reducing resource waste and emissions.

By joining FarmXic, you're not just joining a startup—you're helping build digital infrastructure for climate-resilient agriculture and sustainable food systems, enabling farmers to produce more with fewer inputs and adapt to an increasingly unpredictable climate.

Farmxic UK Limited - 1 position - 28000 - 35000 - Contract - Flexible - remote ok

At FarmXic UK Limited, we're building AI-powered tools that help farmers adapt to climate change while reducing the environmental footprint of food production.

Agriculture accounts for a significant share of global greenhouse gas emissions, yet farmers often lack access to real-time, data-driven tools to optimise soil health, water use, nutrient management, and climate resilience. Our flagship platform, SoilSense AI, combines environmental sensing, predictive analytics, and digital agronomy to help growers make better decisions that improve productivity while reducing resource waste and emissions.

By joining FarmXic, you're not just joining a startup—you're helping build digital infrastructure for climate-resilient agriculture and sustainable food systems, enabling farmers to produce more with fewer inputs and adapt to an increasingly unpredictable climate.

Sphere - Head of Engineering and Security - $185-$200k plus equity and full benefits - Permanent - Totally remote

At Sphere we make it easy for everyone to invest in a climate-friendly way, even in their 401(k)s. This person will lead the buildout of our AtmoSphere Portal, where customers can login to manage their investments and see the climate impact they're making with their money. The ideal candidate has experience leading engineering security at a financial firm, has a background in back end development, and is passionate about bringing climate solutions to everyone everywhere. Learn more and apply here: https://oursphere.org/about-us/head-of-engineering-security

Support our work

You can support us financially on Open Collective.