Hey CATs,

Welcome to issue 327 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

🎉 Welcome to our new organisers

We started onboarding @Marta Adamska as a new Community Organiser and @John Billings and @Yekta Samani as our new Tech Organisers taking over from @Eugenus Optimus who we'd like to thank for all his work over past 1.5 years 🙏

The new organisers are getting up to speed and you'll hear more from us all over the coming months.

✏️ From the blog

Read about how participants in our first Coaching Circle moved from setting the stage and exploring shared intentions (Cultivating Change Part 1) to developing business cases and made a commitment to climate action (Cultivating Change Part 2).

Also - learn about the upcoming Systems Series event where you can join in to Map the Current Reality of Unsustainable Tech

#️⃣ Slack channel highlights

#greener-design: N and R shared some design tools that can be used offline in this message

#greener-ai: C shared an article that calculates numbers to show how agentic Ai is a qualitatively different use case compared to relatively simple AI chats - have a read and start a discussion in the thread

#3-questions-and-ideas: M is looking for educators and resources on topics outlined in https://climate-tech.getoutline.com/doc/educational-proposal-draft-uuZZIKJqVN

📅 CAT events (see all)

Wed, Sep 9 - CAT Book Club: Enshittification [online]

Thu, Sep 10 - Thinking in systems: Mapping the current reality of unsustainable tech [online]: Work together to map out the complex challenges hindering the development of sustainable technology (part of the #cat-systems-series)

Wed, Sep 16 - From Invisible to Accountable: Designing digital products in the age of AI [online]: Speaker Thorsten Jonas argues that sustainability and responsibility must become a core quality attribute of using and designing digital products - and especially AI (part of the Responsible AI series)

Tue, Sep 22 - CAT Report Discussion: State of the Fossil Free Internet [online]: A casual discussion about the Green Web Foundation's State of the Fossil Free Internet report

🍩 Community networking

Get to know other CATs and make some friends in the community. Every 2 weeks, we match 2-3 CATs so you can connect over a quick 30-minute call. Simply join #cat-roulette, pick your region and wait for a message from Donut about your match! Our next round of matches will go out on Fri, Sep 18th. More info

Media, events, and news

▶️ CAT videos

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

Planet A: How greed is turning Spain into a desert

Spain is Europe's greenhouse. Vast, plastic-covered fields dominate its southern coast to produce up to 25 percent of Europe's fruit and veg. But this has a price. Spain is experiencing its worst water crisis in history, with thousands of illegal wells drilled to irrigate farms aggravating the problem — all for cheap, year-round produce for the richer countries up north.

🎤 Podcasts

The latest climate-related podcast episodes. Don't forget, if you're looking around, there's a list of podcasts maintained by CATs!

AI Sustainability Podcast: How Sustainability Leaders Can Master AI

In this episode of the AI Sustainability Podcast, host Nina Benoit chats with expert Colin Bryan on how sustainability leaders can leverage AI. The conversation focuses on practical applications, best use cases, and the impact of AI on the job market. It also delves into the role of an AI operator and the future of AI in the sustainability sector.

BetaTalk: Heat Pumps, AI & Donkeys

In this episode of BetaTalk, host Nathan welcomes heat pump expert Graham Hendra to discuss his latest project: an AI-driven platform called Energy Donkey, developed in collaboration with Planet Devices.

Designed to replace frustrating online forums and standard LLMs that mix reliable and poor advice, Energy Donkey leverages a curated repository of verified engineering data and real-time operational metrics.

Catalyst: What comes after the data center backlash?

In their early days, data centers were largely welcomed by communities who saw their arrival as an economic boost. Today as concerns around noise levels, power prices, water use, and AI grow, they face fierce opposition.

In this episode, Shayle speaks to Brian Janous, co-founder and chief commercial officer of Cloverleaf Infrastructure. Together, they unpack the data center backlash and  explore how the industry can approach the problem differently.

Outrage + Optimism: Tales from the Biggest Transition on Earth

"This will never work in India."

That's what Indian truck manufacturers said about electric freight. Now they build the trucks.

Something is going on here at a speed the rest of the world has not yet noticed. Solar capacity has gone from under three gigawatts to more than 160 in ten years. Across the same decade, 171 million people moved out of extreme poverty.

But in eastern Delhi, a woman who has lived beside an open mountain of garbage for fifty years asks Tom Rivett-Carnac for one thing: tell the world about us.

So, in the second of three episodes from India, Tom goes looking for what is really driving this change, what it looks like up close, and whether it can deliver for the people who need it most.

📅 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 Sep 09, 2026 - Design Essentials for Climate Conscious Leaders

Marc O'Brien, co-founder of Climate Designers, traces the chaos and sliding door moments that brought us here — and what it means for creatives to forge a different path forward.

Wednesday Sep 16, 2026 - Founders Connect

We've created a safe space for founders in climate to share challenges they're facing with like-minded folks. Sign up for an unfiltered fireside chat with Amir Afshar on scaling Shellworks through a fire and selling to commercial partners. Free to attend, but places are limited.

Wednesday Sep 16, 2026 - Ecological Intelligence for AI learning session (Co-creation with the More-than-Human sandbox)

Join us for our 16th learning session on Wednesday, September 16, at 5 pm CEST / 10 am EDT, exploring how we can reimagine AI through the lens of Ecological Intelligence. We'll do this with Anab Jain, co-founder of the speculative design studio Superflux.

Wednesday Sep 16, 2026 - Fractional Influence & Responsible AI

Fiona MacNeill and Mark Buss will be previewing their GreenIO London talks and giving an overview of the conference.

Wednesday Sep 23, 2026 - Tracking the true planetary impact of the AI supply chain

Understand more about the environmental impacts of AI at this online event featuring guest speaker Alistair Alexander. He examines the semiconductor industry, which supplies the microchips powering AI's processing capabilities.

Wednesday Sep 30, 2026 - Green IO London

Part of FOST, Green IO London 2026 takes place Sep 30- Oct 1 in Convene Sancroft, St. Paul's, London. This event is your go-to place to decarbonize your tech stack. Expect candid conversations between practitioners and leaders alike; building bridges is in the DNA of Green IO.

Thursday Oct 01, 2026 - Make It Count: Sustainability Communication Workshop

A powerful 90-minute workshop to make every sustainability conversation count. Learn to start better conversations, avoid overwhelm, speak to what people care about, and share your passion in a way that sparks curiosity – not shutdown.

📰 News Highlights

ESI Africa: Africa’s new solar factories are built for North American, not African roofs

Africa’s solar panel manufacturing output is set to quadruple in 2026, reaching around 3,500MW as two large new plants ramp up in Egypt and Tanzania, according to new analysis from Ember and the African Tech Futures Lab. Almost none of that capacity is destined for African roofs.

Tech Xplore: Domain-informed AI could help electricity grids plan for rising demand and changing climate

Artificial intelligence has become a major new pressure on the electricity grid at the same time as it is emerging as one of the most promising tools for making that grid resilient, according to a new publication by United Nations University scientists.

The Big Issue: How Europe’s biggest climate tech hub is innovating to save the planet

Sustainable Ventures’ London HQ is Europe’s biggest climate tech hub, offering 160 green companies opportunities for peer support and investment.

ET Datacenters: AI Energy Surge Outpaces Tech Firms' Climate Action

A new report reveals that climate commitments by technology companies are not keeping pace with the escalating energy demands driven by the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. This highlights an urgent need for enhanced sustainability practices across the digital infrastructure sector to meet global climate targets.

Hurriyet: Camera traps reveal Istanbul’s wild side

Camera traps hidden in Istanbul’s forests are revealing a thriving wild kingdom, from roe deer to wolves and wildcats, that scientists are now using to safeguard the city’s rich biodiversity.

The Register: The search company that plants trees just launched a Linux browser to help Europe battle big tech

Berlin-based eco-conscious search outfit Ecosia is expanding its range of European-focused web browsers to include a Linux version, citing the growing number of users in the EU looking for open alternatives to the clutches of American tech giants. 

Trade Finance Global: Brazil’s exporters turn to proof of origin blockchain solution amid new EU documentation requirements

Brazilian exporters are turning to blockchain to meet increasingly complex EU proof-of-origin and supply chain documentation requirements. A new platform aims to help smaller suppliers remain connected to EU-facing supply chains as traceability and sustainability requirements tighten.

💚 Papers We Love 💚

AXA: The Cost of Context -Profiling the Energy Footprint of Input Tokens in Large Language Models

The rapid adoption of Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) and long-context LLMs has shifted the computational burden toward the prefill phase— the initial stage where the model processes all input tokens in parallel before generating a response— yet its energy impact remains poorly characterised.

The Axa team investigate the contradiction between massive hardware-level power spikes and the sub-linear marginal cost of input tokens reported in system-level studies.

💼 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.

Wholegrain Digital - Multiple - £40-£43k - Permanent - Flexible - remote ok

Digital Designer

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