Future-proofing the industry for the 21st century will require the very best talent and innovation available.

A career in energy continues to offer a huge variety of exciting and rewarding opportunities. As the sector transforms into a decarbonised, digitalised industry that meets its customers’ ever-changing needs, businesses need solutions to challenges and the arrival of the Covid-19 crisis has created more disruption, uncertainty and systemic change.

Future-proofing the industry for the 21st century (as the sector transforms into a decarbonised, digitalised industry), will require the very best talent to drive initiatives through.

Just 14% of the energy workforce are women, but emerging sectors present an opportunity to shape a growing market.

So what is it like to work in the energy industry, where only 5% of executive board seats in UK-based companies are held by women, and 61% have no women at all on their board?

Sarah Merrick, founder and CEO of Ripple Energy, says that the energy sector is going through a seismic period of change. “By 2050, more than 80% of the UK’s electricity could come from wind and solar,” she says. This is good news for women and the environment, as the more progressive “clean” energy companies are, in Merrick’s experience, considerably more egalitarian than the fossil and nuclear energy sector. “Having worked in renewables for more than 20 years, I would say there’s a stark difference in gender equity between clean energy and fossil fuel companies,” Merrick says.

Encouraging more women into the sector.

The Global Energy Talent Index Report 2019 found that women account for only 14% of workers. Closing the skills gap is necessary, but gender barriers need to be overcome too. “Put simply, I believe the sector will be unable to keep up with the demands of the world if the diversity skills deficit continues.”

This change needs to start at the grassroots. It begins with schools linking subjects that are being taught with real jobs in society. This could be enhanced by getting more BAME role models and Stem ambassadors into schools to talk about their work, which would help debunk any misconceptions children might have that they can’t do such a job because they don’t fit the mould, especially BAME pupils and young girls.

Louise Kingham, CEO of the Energy Institute and board member for POWERful Women (PfW) – a professional initiative that pledges to ensure 40% of middle management and 30% of executive board positions in energy will be filled with women by 2030 – says the rate of progress has been “glacial”.

“We need more visible female role models and we need louder, clearer leadership and targets,” Kingham says. “We also need a range of internal policies and programmes – for example, on flexible working and changes to recruitment practice – to remove unconscious bias and become consciously inclusive.”