Climate Change for Software Engineers
Software is critical to climate solutions—climate modeling, energy efficiency & grid balancing, supply chain optimization, and much more. Get a crash course on climate science and impacts and find the highest leverage solutions for your skills. 6 weeks.
Next cohort deadline
March 18, 2022
- 100% online - 6 weeks / 5 hours per week
- Course project tailored to your software skills
- Economy-wide software and climate map
- Sector-specific deep dives from climate software gurus
do { software } while ( climate crisis )
- 1
Find software’s place in climate action
Review the latest climate science and learn how our world is changing. Discover the highest leverage points for software in climate action. The space is vast: energy efficiency & grid optimization, climate and policy impact modeling, climate tech in buildings, food and agriculture, industry, and so much more. Climate is eating the world, and software is an essential part of the solution.
- 2
Make your first contribution
We’ll rapidly show you the landscape, map climate solutions to software skills, and help you identify the first step you can take ... whether that's contributing to an open-source project, finding a role at a company, starting your own prototype, or anything in-between!
- 3
Explore the emerging ecosystem with like-minded peers
Become a part of a community of software engineers, engineering team leaders, entrepreneurs, and more. Collaborate as you learn and work on assignments in the program. This community is open to you forever and will keep growing with future cohorts. Kickstart your climate career together!
I really enjoyed the Terra.do software course. It gave me a great overview of the landscape of how software engineers might help on climate, and we had a fun and really engaged group of people in the course. Thinking about climate change can be overwhelming so it was motivating to know that so many other software engineers are in this too and we're all trying to find the best ways to help.
Patrick Temple
Engineering Manager - Cloud
Butterfly Network
USA
World-class Instructors and guest Lecturers
Antonis Stampoulis
Technical Advisor, SustainChain; ex-Director of Engineering, Originate NYC; Ph.D., Yale University & Post-doc, MIT
Course creator
Antonis is a software engineering consultant for innovative startups building software platforms in fin-tech and in sustainability. In his consulting practice, he supports software teams in technical design and technical strategy, as well as through engineering mentorship. As part of his climate change journey, Antonis has been a technical advisor to SustainChain, a platform and a community aiming to accelerate progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals. Antonis is also a Terra.do graduate from the inaugural Learning for Action cohort. He is looking forward to bringing his experience to support other engineers in their own journey! He was previously the Director of Engineering at Originate NYC, where he helped build a number of software products from concept to launch in partnership with startups and innovation branches of large enterprises. As an engineer he specialized in distributed systems and software development tools; and as a manager, on career mentorship. Antonis is also a programming languages researcher with expertise in language design and implementation, as a Ph.D. graduate from Yale University and a post-doc at MIT.
Lisa Rennels
Lead developer, Mimi.jl package (economic impacts of climate change); Ph.D. candidate at Energy & Resources Group, UC Berkeley
Course creator
Lisa uses computer science methods to research the economic impacts of climate change, and works on software engineering to support research and policy-making in this area. Currently she is a lead developer of the Mimi.jl package to support the construction and use of integrated assessment models to explore the policy-relevant social cost of carbon. Lisa is also interested in the incorporation of uncertainty analysis and global sensitivity analysis methods into climate research. Lisa is a PhD student at the Energy and Resources Group and a MSc student in Computer Science with a focus on programming languages and software development. Through her MSc work she is actively pursuing a better understanding of how computer scientists can support climate research and policy makers. Lisa spent the three years previous to UC Berkeley working at an environmental consulting firm called Industrial Economics Inc. where she leveraged data analysis, programming, and GIS to work on projects related to the effects of climate change, specifically those related to water resources, and assist policy-makers in planning paths forward. She has a B.A. from Dartmouth College in Environmental Studies, focused on environmental economics, and a Post-Baccalaureate Computer Science Minor from Tufts University.
Our Guest Lecturers
Chris Page
Sustainability Consultant, Climate Interactive
Dr. Charles Fletcher
Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Professor of Earth Sciences at University of Hawaii at Manoa
Asim Hussain
Green Cloud Advocacy Lead at Microsoft
Michael Cohen
Lead Developer at New Sun Road
Bosky Dalal
Director of Data Engineering, Afresh
Ilias Bartolini
Engineering Manager at Ecosia
Exceptional alumni
Our alumni have accomplished careers in industry, policy, and more, and have all made a commitment to focusing their career on sustainability and decarbonization. Expect a similarly accomplished peer set from the world of software, technology, product development, modeling, and more.
The program breakdown
Week 01
The Drivers and Impacts of Climate Change
Scale of climate change and its impacts; latest in climate science; role of software in helping us understand the current state, perform climate forecasting, enable day to day changes to production and consumption, and inform policy choices
Week 02
The Solution Landscape
Latest understanding on climate change mitigation, adaptation and resilience; preliminary discussion on how software is enabling climate action
Week 03
Renewable Energy and Electrification
Review case studies of software components that are enabling more dynamics, distributed, and decentralized energy systems; discuss how software enables energy transition through local microgrids, smart devices with automated load shifting, etc.
Week 04
Buildings, Cities, and Supply Chains
Role of software in more efficient uses of energy and resources; review case studies from companies using software in sustainable agriculture, food material production, and many more industries.
Week 05
Carbon Removal, Carbon Accounting, and Carbon Offsetting
Software in carbon accounting and measurement, reporting, verification (MRV) of carbon offsets and carbon removal solutions
Get a detailed syllabus
Personalized and relevant instruction
Our world-class faculty bring not only climate software expertise and experience but also trained techniques in online teaching and facilitation. Think of them as your personal coaches as you navigate your climate action journey in software.
01
Discussion groups
Once a week, you will meet with your instructor in live, small-group sessions for:
- Project presentations by your fellow learners
- Discussions on software’s role in climate action as relevant to your skills
- Networking to find your future job, collaborator, co-founder, employee, or just a friend.
02
Software solution deep dives
Through classes & guest lectures, you will dive deep into climate software solution areas like:
- Local microgrids, smart devices in energy systems
- Measurement, verification, and reporting of carbon offsets and carbon removal solutions
- Software in food material production
- ...and more
03
Your climate action plan
Use the program to develop a customized plan for yourself, including:
- Identifying where your coding skills are most needed in climate
- Making your first contribution tailored to your skills and the path you'd like to follow
- Understanding how to make a career out of it - what roles, which companies, what communities
- Actually building your first climate network to get your started
Pricing and expected commitment
Climate Change for Software Engineers
/ 6 Weeks
Who is this program for?
The program is perfect for anyone looking to contribute to climate action via software engineering. Software engineers and engineering managers of all stripes—full stack, front-end, back-end, mobile, data, DevOps, or embedded engineer—are welcome in the program.
- You’re an active coder (at least semi-professionally), and think software can contribute to solve almost any problem
- You’re looking for climate challenges to apply your software skills towards
- You have sufficient time (5 hours/week) to dedicate to the program
- You’re not professionally involved in software
- You don’t have the time to commit to a deep dive right now (you can always apply for later cohorts)
Climate Change for Software Engineers
/ 6 Weeks