
Ask HN: What jobs can a software engineer take to tackle climate change? - envfriendly
I&#x27;m a software engineer with a diverse background in backend, frontend development.<p>How do I find jobs related to tackling global warming and climate change in Europe for an English speaker?<p>Open to ideas and thoughts.
======
estsauver
So here's a simple framework for this:

1) Learn the things that are most likely to actually move the needle on
climate change. There are a bunch of frameworks for thinking about this, but I
think
[https://cmi.princeton.edu/wedges/intro](https://cmi.princeton.edu/wedges/intro)
is pretty simple. Each wedge is a viable chunk of a huge path to mitigating
climate change.

2) Search for companies that solve each of these problems individually. A
company that sets out to solve "climate change" is unlikely to succeed in my
view, but a company that sets out to make it easy to switch from coal plants
to natural gas plants by bringing together the right financing and tech
transfer might be easy.

3) Rank those places in terms of your likelihood in moving the needle for
them. Nuclear power plant? Maybe they really could use an excellent software
engineer, maybe they've already got a great set of people or it's not that
important for their business. But maybe those same nuclear power plants
desperately need an excellent quantitative person for their sales team, which
is really what will move the needle for them.

I'd also suggest sourcing the companies through some of the VCs that have had
success having world transforming success. Despite not loving Peter Thiel's
political leanings, Founders Fund has funded Space X, The Climate Corporation
and Oculus that each have/had a real shot at knocking out a wedge by
themselves. Some places have a great track record for backing ambitious moon
shots.

(Disclosure, I used to work for The Climate Corporation. I did go to work
there because Peter Thiel talked about it in his Stanford Startups class
though, so I think that counts as taking my own advice.)

------
tempguy9999
I'd say from long experience of being ignored when trying to do this and
similar stuff, the best payoff is to push it upstairs to those in power, the
politicians, who doubtless have many other things to do, but whose job it
basically is. Your job is to tackle stuff on an individual level, yourself and
your family perhaps, but theirs is to deal with things on a societal level
where there is much greater effectiveness.

If there's a higher payoff available than that, I don't know where it is.

Absolutely vital tip from extremely painful experience; your physical and more
vitally mental health come first. You must not forget that as if you burn
yourself out you're no good for anything.

~~~
reddhouse
Totally agree with both points. I came to the conclusion that liquid democracy
could bring about political change more rapidly than any other “movement”, so
I built this: [https://liquidcenter.org](https://liquidcenter.org)
Unfortunately, Sybil-resistant online identification is still a really hard
problem to solve.

------
EnergyGuyTemp
I feel that it's necessary that I post. I've been working as an energy
consultant for large businesses and governments where I improve the energy
efficiency of facilities, in effect reducing their carbon footprint. Climate
change is a complex topic and what little I know helps me understand how
complex of a challenge it is. The following is my bias and probably incorrect
opinion.

The most effective way to reduce the effects of global warming is to implement
a carbon tax. Use the power of the economic system we have to guide firms
reduce their own carbon footprint. For example, in Canada, they implemented a
revenue-neutral policy where carbon is taxed and the money made is refunded
evenly per person. The only costs are the minimum administrative and the
substitution/income effect (Slutsky equation).

As a person, it's difficult to know where to help. I would recommend to first
promote the above and then look at the metric '$ per CO2 emission saved'. I
believe it is the most important metric to reducing your carbon footprint.

Taking the bus instead of driving, moving to a smaller house, reducing meat
consumption or updating to LED lighting in many cases has a negative $/CO2,
meaning you save money and reduce CO2. With the money you saved, look at
projects with positive but small $/CO2, this could be purchasing power from
renewable sources, purchasing a more efficient heating and cooling system.
This list is what I've seen in north america but changes greatly depending on
region and what you are already doing.

Unfortunately it is a very complex challenge. I know I didn't answer your
question. I would recommend starting with good information, the IPCC releases
reports of the leading science of climate change and would recommend starting
with the report for policy makers as a summary.
[https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/syr/](https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/syr/)

------
themagician
Go outside and plant a tree. Preferably in a tropical area where it is less
likely to burn during the summer.

Trees are the cheapest most efficient way to remove carbon from the
atmosphere. No other solution comes even remotely close.

You can drive a Prius, become a vegan, and buy solar panels but a person who
plants a single acre of trees will have offset an entire lifetime of
greenhouse gas production and then some.

~~~
tempguy9999
A few mins searching and I've not been able to find any figures that justify
that, do you have any to hand? An acre sounds a bit small.

Nearest I've found is
<[https://greenismything.com/2015/06/23/howmanytrees/>](https://greenismything.com/2015/06/23/howmanytrees/>)
which suggests ~2 acres per head for the US.

~~~
avip
The Trillion-trees campaign claims it'll offset _at least 10 years of
anthropogenic emissions_.

So to a zero approximation, I need to plant 1000 trees to offset my lifetime's
carbon footprint. Without too much math, looking at my backyard, it's not
possible to squeeze that into an acre (an order of magnitude off).

------
zachsherman
Good luck on that but if you really want to do something, join an
organization, protest, etc. We need political power more than we need software
right now.

~~~
plange
You can do both.

~~~
zachsherman
Yah sorry that sounded aggressive, doing both (one job one not) is my plan

------
i2amsam
My favorite piece on this topic is “What can a technologist do about climate
change”
[http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/](http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/)

We started [http://climateaction.tech/](http://climateaction.tech/) to amplify
and connect tech workers with just these types of questions, check out our
guides there and join the Slack to connect with other folks wrestling with the
same questions.

------
plange
Worked at a startup that unfortunately went under, trying to reuse heat
generated in datacenters. (saves on electricity spend on airco and saves on
having to generate heat elsewhere)

Luckily some competitors still exist:
[https://www.cloudandheat.com/](https://www.cloudandheat.com/)
[https://www.qarnot.com/fr/home-fr/](https://www.qarnot.com/fr/home-fr/)

~~~
yholio
The temperature differential between what the hottest chips can accept, about
70C, and the environment suggests this is a highly inefficient source of
energy, due to Carnot limits.

I wish people would go for the big guns, fully renewable energy, nuclear,
electric transport, green concrete and steel - the major issues instead of
wasting time and money recovering 10% of what some coal power plant supplied
to their data centre.

It's better than nothing but very close to nothing. It's a pervasive way of
thinking in green engineering, every bit helps but what we need is BIG help:
[https://www.withouthotair.com/c19/page_114.shtml](https://www.withouthotair.com/c19/page_114.shtml)

------
westurner
> _I 'm a software engineer with a diverse background in backend, frontend
> development._

> _How do I find jobs related to tackling global warming and climate change in
> Europe for an English speaker?_

While not directly answering the question, here are some ideas for purchasing,
donating, creating new positions, and hiring people that care:

Write more efficient code. Write more efficient compilers. Optimize
interpretation and compilation so that the code written by people with domain
knowledge who aren't that great at programming who are trying to solve other
important problems is more efficient.

Push for PPAs (Power Purchase Agreements) that offset energy use. Push for
directly sourcing clean energy.

Use services that at least have 100% PPAs for the energy they use: services
that run on clean energy sources.

Choose green datacenters.

\- [ ] Add the capability for cloud resource schedulers like Kubernetes and
Terraform to prefer or require clean energy datacenters.

Choose to work with companies that voluntarily choose to do sustainability
reporting.

Work to help develop (and popularize) blockchain solutions that are more
energy efficient and that have equal or better security assurances as less
efficient chains.

Advocate for clean energy. Donate to NGOs working for our environment and for
clean energy.

Invest in clean energy. There are a number of clean energy ETFs, for example.
Better energy storage is a good investment.

Push for certified green buildings and datacenters.

\- [ ] We should create some sort of a badge and structured data (JSONLD,
RDFa, Microdata) for site headers and/or footers that lets consumers know that
we're working toward '200% green' so that we can vote with our money.

Do not vote for people who are rolling back regulations that protect our
environment. Pay an organization that pays lobbyists to work the system:
that's the game.

Help explain why it's both environment-rational and cost-rational to align
with national and international environmental sustainability and clean energy
objectives.

Argue that we should make external costs internal in order that markets will
optimize for what we actually want.

~~~
westurner
Thermodynamics is part of the physics curriculum for many software engineering
and computer science degrees.

There are a number of existing solutions that solve for energy inefficiency
due to unreclaimed waste heat.

"Thermodynamics of Computation Wiki"
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18146854](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18146854)

"Why Do Computers Use So Much Energy?"
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18139654](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18139654)

------
aaronbrethorst
Pick the political party in your country most interested in stopping climate
change and go work for them. And vote.

------
gameswithgo
you can help make compilers and hits and languages and their core libraries
more efficient. the average program uses around 100x more electricity than it
needs to. as a bonus i will be much less annoyed by software even if jevons
paradox results in no co2 reduction

------
jml7c5
In terms of software engineering alone, your best bet may just be to find an
organization you support and work hard while under their employ. Even if
you're not _directly_ affecting emissions etc., you're supporting those who
do. As a bonus, passion for a cause can be very motivational. (Though keep in
mind you may be discouraged if the organization feels dysfunctional or
ineffective. Be ready to switch jobs if need be.)

As for finding those organizations, that's a different question and may be
better asked without reference to software engineering so as to receive the
widest spectrum of orgs.

------
truckerbill
The key phrase to be looking for in terms of employment is 'Environmental
NGO'. As well as this, think about incentive engineering: ways you can make it
easy for people to change their lifestyle.

------
civilian
80000hours has a writeup on the topic: [https://80000hours.org/problem-
profiles/climate-change/](https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/climate-
change/)

The coolest company I saw on he list was this:
[https://www.coolearth.org/](https://www.coolearth.org/)

A lot of the HN comments talk about planting trees. What's more effective, I
imagine, is preventing deforestation in the first place.

------
matt7aylor
As a founder of a startup in the green tech area it is fantastic to hear more
and more people sharing an environmental motivation about the work they want
to do. There are a growing number of motivated startups around with a direct
environmental purpose, though they can be harder to find and a slightly
different beast from the established tech companies. (Not wanting to plug
myself too much but we're currently looking for a motivated developer actually
[https://lightfi.io/jobs](https://lightfi.io/jobs) )

There are also a number of environment and social impact accelerators that may
be useful for finding companies or pursuing one's own ideas, we started though
the EU Climate-KIC program, for example. Increasingly as well there are a
number of larger corporates engaging with social impact as a driver (sometimes
this can appear a little like green-washing but there are some genuine
motivations behind it).

At the moment it does seem more of a growing industry, the people and the
companies are there if you can keep that determination to find them. And the
more developers showing and looking for a clear sense of that environmental
motivation will itself push through a wider change as there is plenty of great
and fulfilling work that can be done.

------
avip
There are so many startups in that space. Smart grid management, drones to
support wind turbines maintenance, robots that clean solar panels (yes, that
is a thing [https://www.ecoppia.com/](https://www.ecoppia.com/)), water
leakage alerts using smart valves, all the alternative meat wannabes, vertical
farming? (questionable...), the list goes on and on. There are VC funds
investing solely in these things. Good luck!

------
eldodo
Query like this "Ltd. climate change site:co.uk". Ireland, Netherlands or
Sweden may also work. Others don't have an English-friendly working
environment afaik

------
corradio
Hello! I asked myself the same question, and ended up founding Tomorrow
([https://www.tmrow.com](https://www.tmrow.com)).

I believe understanding the footprint of anything should be a commodity, and
easily accessible to anyone. That's why we're currently building an app that
automatically computes your carbon footprint, and gives you the means to
change for the better. I previously built electricitymap.org, and we're now
hiring if you're interested:
[https://www.tmrow.com/jobs](https://www.tmrow.com/jobs) Feel free to reach
out directly if you want to chat (or join our Slack at slack.tmrow.com). This
is the most pressing issue of our time and we simply don't have enough people
working or caring about it.

A bit of reading: \-
[http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/](http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/)
\- [https://www.tmrow.com/climatechange](https://www.tmrow.com/climatechange)

Olivier

------
mrmrcoleman
I keep getting YouTube ads from a company called Ecosia[1] who describe
themselves as a search engine that plants trees.

I don’t know anything else about them other than I think they are based in
Europe. Might be worth a look.

[1] [https://www.ecosia.org/](https://www.ecosia.org/)

~~~
kamyarg
They are based in Berlin to be precise

------
Pxtl
All politics is local. Imho the most promising stuff from tech startups is the
e-scooter rental stuff. City councils are naturally conservative about big
transit-oriented projects, but e-scooter rentals and public transit could work
together to be a great system for making dents in climate change.

~~~
TeMPOraL
If only the e-scooter companies weren't working off Uber's Handbook of Success
Through Antisocial Behaviour... Maybe not all of them do, just the ones I know
of.

------
mhkool
The easiest way to reduce CO2 is to plant a forest, so look for companies that
do this.

~~~
sjclemmy
I was thinking about this yesterday and came up with this question: How many
trees would I have to plant, and how long would they have to live to offset my
(average Western European) lifetime CO2 contribution?

~~~
gameswithgo
and if you fly somewhere to plant it you just added a bunch more

~~~
sjclemmy
Yeah, but how many?

------
Glench
Saul Griffiths of Otherlab makes a solid case for massive electrification as
the primary means for reducing carbon: [https://medium.com/otherlab-
news/decarbonization-and-gnd-b8d...](https://medium.com/otherlab-
news/decarbonization-and-gnd-b8ddd569de16) (mainly that moving to electric
HALVES the amount of energy we need, mostly due to inefficiencies)

Based on his assessment, there are lots of job possibilities in electric
vehicles, electric heating and cooling, and LED / industrial processes.

------
jvagner
I've started developing an idea for a kickstarter-like platform to document,
socialize and (forgive me) gamify individual actions towards climate change
improvements. If we could get a certain percentage of populations to change
some basics in their lives, and influence governmental policy in kind, we
could take more responsibility for our own impacts, and our collective
contributions.

Very nascent, researching and blue-sky-ing, but I'm just putting it out there
for anyone who might like to discuss this.

~~~
late2part
I'd like to discuss this - can you create a forum or similar, or I will?

~~~
jvagner
not sure what you have in mind, but i'm game... my profile email address is
also valid.

have slack, too.

------
ellisv
There are, very broadly speaking, two strategies for tackling climate change:

1\. Innovation (e.g. find new and better sources of energy) 2\. Mitigation
(e.g. reduce energy consumption)

For example the Tesla Solar Roof is an innovation strategy whereas planting
trees is a mitigation strategy.

Although we really need a combination of both most companies tend to focus on
a single approach, so I'd suggest thinking about which type of approach you'd
like to work on.

------
rihegher
I would look to help a marketing team in an organization that promote reducing
consumption, marketing is in my view the best shot we have to tackle
environmental issues. Once living with a small house not heating too lunch and
using public transport will be trendy, lots of people may change their way of
life. Now where do you find them? I would start looking for activist artist.

------
someuser2t
I know a recruiter that specializes in durability in the netherlands. Not sure
they do much software engineers though.
[https://www.sustainabletalent.nl/](https://www.sustainabletalent.nl/)

I have pondered about a more sustainable career for a long time. But the
opportunities did not match my talents, hope it works out for you.

------
acconrad
I'd say work for my company ([https://www.indigoag.com/join-
us](https://www.indigoag.com/join-us)) but you work in Europe.

Look for agtech or renewable energy companies who need software engineers.
You're helping tackle climate change by being a part of the solution.

------
ken
Are you looking only for other jobs in software engineering, or are you
willing to enter a different field to accomplish this?

Software has the possibility to change behavior but it's probably not the
biggest lever available for this particular problem.

------
atupis
Get high as possible salary and donate as much as possible to
[https://www.rainforestcoalition.org](https://www.rainforestcoalition.org) or
other nonprofit.

------
istjohn
Slightly adjacent to your question, but I've thought it would be nice to have
a Google Maps-like app that optimizes for fuel use instead of drive time or
distance.

~~~
jml7c5
If there are any Googlers reading: I'd love if Maps implemented this. Helpful
for saving people some cash, too, which I am sure would be popular! As it is I
have to consider distance, time spent, hilliness, speed limits (to limit wind
resistance), and amount of stop & go, then guesstimate.

------
seltzered_
[http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/](http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/)
may inspire you.

------
gedy
A parent - and raise your child(ren) to live in an ecologically sensitive
manner that you wish the rest of the world to be. (Am being honest, not being
snarky)

~~~
azangru
Surely not being a parent is friendlier to the environment :-)

~~~
gedy
Not if those who care about the environment are replaced by those who do not
care after a generation or two.

------
vertline3
Well if you are looking at large risky breakthrough, Maybe AI to control
fusion plasma? Or maybe something to help promising ideas in carbon capture?

------
ginger123
How about stop using automobiles and walk to places?

------
barcodedED
you can start by realizing "global cooling/global warming/climate change is a
racket. what you do next is up to you.

------
__s
Any programming job where you write code that runs at a higher power
efficiency than whoever else would've programmed it if you hadn't taken the
job

------
Theodores
The web is not very green or very accessible. Every bloated web page requires
a lot of electrons to be moved around.

Recently the web has evolved with CSS Grid and this means that you no longer
need to have web pages made of 'div soup' with every 'div' using half a dozen
non-semantic class attributes.

It is extremely rare for a web page to be 10% or higher in actual content, if
you look at the actual document and don't even consider the
images/scripts/stylesheets. Most of the web could be at the 33% mark if you
strip the presentational markup away and just use HTML5 elements, styling them
with CSS Grid. The benefits of writing this way are many, apart from being
green, such a page is accessible because useful elements are used for the
page, e.g. 'nav' instead of 'div', and easier to maintain, because the content
is kept simple. There is also SEO benefit from having a quicker to download
page that is a fraction of the size.

Now you may scoff at saving a few bytes from a few web pages but the savings
add up, get one template right for a website that gets used by a few million
people on a daily basis and you are suddenly saving gigabytes. People's phone
batteries last longer, cell towers don't have to do as much work, server rooms
can run cooler, it is a bigger win than people think.

Once upon a time we thought nothing of single use food containers or excess
packaging, the humble 'div' with its framework class attributes double-
wrapping every block of content on the page with a few 'span' elements thrown
in for good measure is possibly more wasteful, at least you can reuse plastic
bags, you can't reuse a 'div' that has been beamed across the airwaves from
the far side of the globe.

There are laws coming along meaning that web pages have to be accessible. You
can make them accessible in a lip service way or re-write them with
maintainable, CSS-Grid styled HTML5 to deliver a first class accessible
experience. In the EU there is a two year period for the public sector to get
their act together on this.

Writing HTML without the div where you focus on document structure and use the
right elements is very easy, as is using CSS Grid. But we are in an industry
where the mindset is to work from a visual mockup and to then paint by numbers
gormlessly using the dreadful div element that has no place in modern HTML and
very much goes against the 'separation of concerns'.

The world needs someone to teach a new intake of web developers how to write
actual HTML, leaving the build tools and hacks far behind, more of a focus on
the written word rather than the overly complex tech.

We have had revolutions in web design, for instance 'responsive' was a thing.
If we can have actual HTML instead of bloated presentational markup then there
will be some old timers who won't get it, but this easier way should be well
received. Right now though dev teams are very much geared up for over
complicating projects and not even thinking to use just the HTML5 elements in
a content first type of way. Hierarchies of teams are built around
anachronistic 'agile' processes that are doomed to result in bloated div
websites.

Unless there is nuclear war then we are not going back on the web, it is here
to stay and be improved on. Be that improvement. Teach people how to write web
pages the easy way, enable others to think differently and not be using tired
Stack Overflow 'div' solutions that were okay a decade ago.

The maths of the CO2 saving is not easy to work out. But then it is. HTML is
the language of the web and web pages are what we read. This page you are
reading right now is HTML and not some JSON stringified thing. Coding the lean
HTML5 way does get your HTML document size halved, plus the lights don't have
to be on as long to write it in the first place.

You can do all of this stuff a lot easier than the stuff you have done thus
far. I don't think your skill set is in 'planting trees'. Nobody is looking
for 'green HTML developers' but there is this legislative requirement for
accessible HTML. Start selling yourself to them.

~~~
scarmig
I can't tell if this is a joke or not, but HTML5 and lighter web pages are not
a solution to climate change. There's no way in the world that math works out.

~~~
Theodores
We are doomed anyway. There is no point 'raising awareness' or writing to your
MP. Single handedly nobody can change magically provide the solution you seek.

But half the world spends half their time on their phone. Halve the bytes and
bandwidth needed for that and make things accessible - what is not to like? I
bet that changing the way we do web pages to remove old fashioned bloat saves
more penguins than your suggestion.

My suggestion was written specifically for the questioner based on their
skillset. Not a one size fits all solution for everyone.

Please do the maths for me after refactoring a web page of your choosing so
you have an idea of the gains. Don't be a blocker, present some sums.

------
anonu
Build apps and technology for responsible investing. The Trump tax cuts have
put the onus on corporations to be social and societal stewards. Investors
need to make sure corporations are held to a higher standard

------
thrower123
Can we cut the constant climate change topics? For the last three or four
weeks I haven't been able to swing a dead cat without hitting somebody going
into histrionics about the end being nigh because humans or cow farts are
destroying the planet.

~~~
truckerbill
It really is that big of an issue.

~~~
thrower123
Sure, maybe, but this is not the place for bellyaching about it. Or at least
it didn't use to be.

