Three weeks ago, I left my previous job at Capital One and joined a climate tech startup. The post I shared in LinkedIn was, by far, my most popular LinkedIn post of all time.
I also have quite a few people reaching out to me and expressed interest in finding a data science job in climate tech setting. I've answered these question to enough people, so figured that I should just collect my resources in a blog post!
Science of climate change
IPCC (The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has put out numerous reports on climate change and its impact. Apart from that, I follow lots of climate scientist on twitter (see the "twitter" section below).
If you're interested more broadly in the potential solutions to climate change, I highly recommend Project Drawdown - they have websites, books, and white papers that contains a wealth of information (mostly focused on mitigation).
Role of DS/ML on climate change
For those of you who are DS/ML professionals interested in understanding how we can help with climate change, this is a great paper that I always point to, written by who's who in AI/ML experts: Tackling Climate Change with Machine Learning. It is a pretty comprehensive paper that goes into numerous sectors in which DS / ML can make meaningful impact to climate change.
One thing I wish the paper provide is a qualitative measure of potential impacts, like Project Drawdown does. But at least they provide some categorical flags on the solutions they proposed, which is helpful.
The group of people who published the paper also have a website, Climate Change AI, that provide periodic newsletters and host conference workshop at various ML conferences. For example, I attended their NeurIPS 2019 Workshop remotely in December 2019. You can see my notes.
Keeping pulse with industry developments
If you're coming from another industrial sector - which is highly likely, because let's face it, climate tech is a still fairly nascent field - one of the things you can do is to start following industry trends and developments in the climate tech sector. This sector is seeing very rapid developments from big companies and startups alike. Just within the past 6 months, there has been a dazzling array of new developments on the climate tech front:
- Big companies announcing their climate goals and/or investments in renewable energy: e.g. Microsoft, Amazon, Google, JPMorgan, IKEA, Target, Starbucks, McDonald's, Rio Tinto
- Institutional investors announcing adjustment to their strategy with climate change focus: e.g. BlackRock (there's a lot more! See, for example, Climate Action 100+, which is an investor initiative to ensure the world's largest corporate greenhouse gas emitters take necessary action on climate change.)
- Venture capital firms and investors announcing climate change focused investment thesis: there are long-time prominent VCs that announced climate-change-focused investment goals (such as Union Square Ventures, Sequoia, and... Jeff Bezos?). There's also a growing number of boutique VCs with a climate tech focus from the start (such as Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Congruent Ventures, Energy impact partners, Powerhouse, Fifty years, Lower Carbon Capital, Spring Lane Capital).
Point being, the climate tech sector is fairly wide (it can potentially touch every facets of the world economy that produces CO2), has a tremendous total addressable market, and is undergoing rapid development. In such an environment, it is helpful to use a variety of resources to keep pulse of the developments. Below are the resources that I've found useful for me.
I'm sure that I have a lot of blind spots when it comes to information conduits, so if you have any suggestions, please shoot them my way!
Podcasts
Below are the podcasts about climate tech that I listen to on a semi-regular basis.
- The Energy Gang: a weekly audio digest on energy, cleantech & the environment from Greentech Media, mostly focused on the latest events, policy changes, and trends in the clean energy field. This is one of the most long-running podcast in this area (first episode aired in 2013). Hosted by Stephen Lacey, Katherine Hamilton and Jigar Shah.
- The Interchange: a weekly podcast on the global energy transformation. More focused in a deep-dive of a particular topic per episode. Hosted by Stephen Lacey and Shayle Kann.
- My Climate Journey: a podcast about one man's quest to better understand climate change and how to help, as told through interviews w/ experts on the front lines. This podcast interviews researchers, founders, investors in climate tech. It's hosted by Jason Jacobs, and the podcast has a slack room that appears to have many climate-tech minded folks on there already. I know of many climate-focused investors and entrepreneurs are on the slack room.
- Switched On: a weekly podcast about the future of energy, transport, sustainability and more, as told by BNEF analysts. Hosted by Mark Taylor and Dana Perkins, who sit down with Bloomberg NEF (BNEF) analysts to uncover the key findings and stories behind their latest research.
- Illuminators: Illuminators is a show about the people and forces transforming the business of energy. It includes stories about how businesses or industries have managed disruption throughout history. This show will help energy experts learn from the wider world of business, and help business learn about the unique world of energy. Hosted by Uplight.
A surprising number of investors and entrepreneurs are fairly active on twitter. Majority of the climate tech news I see are through my twitter networks. My rule of thumb when I come across new climate tech announcements (e.g. new investment from VC firm A to startup B) is to (1) follow the company related to the announcements, and (2) follow the people behind the announcements (e.g. the VC partner that announced the deal, the executive team on the startup, etc). Same thing goes when I come across an interesting podcast episode, journal articles, research report... etc - I would follow the organization that produces the media, as well as the authors / hosts themselves.
Over the years I have grow my twitter following list to 700+. Feel free to go through my following list in case you want to look for ideas for who to follow!
I use LinkedIn in a very similar way of how I use twitter, but LinkedIn is more useful for keeping pulse with companies.
Conclusion
This are the resources that I have found helpful for me to keep pulse of climate change and climate tech. What are your favorite resources? Please let me know!
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