Managing energy transitions: the need for diversity

Diversity is important in decarbonisation because achieving decarbonisation will involve radical innovations in technologies, systems and policies, and research has shown that a diverse team is more innovative than a less diverse team. If you want radical innovation, then you need a diverse team.

Another angle for looking at diversity in decarbonisation is that decarbonisation or climate change is something that everyone will go through, irrespective of your ethnicity, irrespective of your gender, irrespective of where you’re from. Climate change is a global challenge, and one way to tackle a global challenge is to have a global team, to have diversity. The first reason, as I said, is radical innovations. The second reason is that it’s easier to generate solutions that are acceptable to everyone because a diverse team will bring that difference in thought to the table. Diverse solutions to decarbonisation can only come from a diverse team – a team that is representative of different corners of the world, different ethnicities. That way, we can have solutions that are acceptable.

Involving women in the process of decarbonisation means better solutions. Women tend to look at things in depth and on a broader horizon. Having more women at the table means we can generate more innovative solutions to support decarbonisation and take into consideration all the factors that could slow decarbonisation down or accelerate the transition. Another reason why it’s important to have women on board when it comes to research or strategy discussions about decarbonisation is because research has shown that women make the energy decisions at home, and when you have them on board, they generate two basic advantages: contributing to the solutions to lead to more radical innovations but also acting as the first implementers of any strategy that is discussed.

If I give an example of a discussion on how to decarbonise homes, one of the ways is to look at electrification of heat as a renewable electricity; this could be through heat pumps or electric heaters. If women are part of that conversation, they will discuss these technologies, but they are also more likely to implement these solutions at home.

As a woman in energy research, one gap I’ve seen is we don’t tend to praise ourselves. Neither are we talked about. So even when you see a list of people doing great things in energy research, you probably have 80–90% men. It doesn’t mean that women are not doing anything, because women are always in the background. Each of these men on the list will probably have had a female work for them. It’s because we are not very visible.

One of my personal ambitions is to increase the visibility of women and other underrepresented groups in energy research. Last year, we were awarded a grant from the UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC) to host a number of events that will bring women together and increase their visibility. Of course, grants always have project constraints. I would have loved to have had all the women in UK institutions, but we could only accommodate 30.

So we had 30 women from over 15 UK universities gathered in London. We talked about the decarbonisation of different sectors of the economy, how it can be achieved. We networked, we built relationships. We had women from different disciplines – engineering, social sciences, economics – all in the room. The communication between the women was excellent. The ideas we discussed were excellent. This led to a writing retreat to put our ideas into a project document, and we, the organisers, wanted to fund some of these projects. That’s one way to increase visibility in research: receive funding. Another way is to network, especially working in groups. We funded five very innovative ideas that no one had thought about before and we also increased the visibility of these 30 women in energy research.

Another thing I would like to see happen in the decarbonisation space is to showcase the women that have contributed to this field. We’ve seen this in chemistry, we’ve seen this in the fundamental sciences, or we’ve seen this in health, but we’ve not seen this in decarbonisation – showing the women that have been contributing in different parts of the world.

In consulting they’ve done a number of studies to show that having more ethnic minorities, a more diverse team, can lead to innovation and getting work done better and faster. Yet, when it comes to decarbonisation, there have not been many studies to show that you can achieve more by having a diverse team. The UK project I did with the women was one way of gathering evidence to support diversity as a tool to accelerate decarbonisation. We had women from all over the world: Black, non-Black, white, non-white. We formed teams of truly diverse women.

Another project I’m currently running, sponsored by the Cabinet, is looking at the transport sector. We want to use that to generate more evidence to show that a diverse team with different ethnicities can generate better solutions for decarbonisation of the transport sector in the UK. The project has just started, and it’s a social experiment in the north of England. It’s called A Serious Game, and we will have various groups of people – all-white, mixed and all-Black – come up with solutions to decarbonise the transport sector, which is something that they can easily identify with. Personally, I haven’t spoken a lot about diversity in decarbonisation because the evidence for this particular niche is not there yet. The evidence for other sectors is there, and most of the projects I do outside of my research project have been to generate the evidence so we can talk more about it.

If people of colour are not represented in the discipline of decarbonisation or in the field of decarbonisation, the process to get into net-zero carbon will be slower. Once you come up with a technology or strategy to decarbonise a particular sector, it still needs to be accepted by everyone. Having 80% of the population accept any particular solution isn’t really moving in a positive direction towards decarbonisation.

Today, you want 100% of the population to make a behavioural change if we are going to get to net-zero carbon. We are supposed to have decarbonised 25 or 30 years ago and we’re still struggling with greenhouse gases. So, any behavioural change or any technological change that will happen today needs to be accepted by everyone. Now, if you have a team that is representative of the population – Black, white, everyone – you’re more likely to come up with a solution that would be acceptable.

The majority of the researchers and the stakeholders in decarbonisation studies are white males – and I usually say this as a joke – that’s why we’re still here. That’s why we are still struggling to get to net-zero carbon, even when we already have the technologies. The technologies are no longer a problem. The challenge is adoption of these technologies. The challenge is getting these technologies to be cheap so they can be commercialised. So, if the white men have brought all the technologies, unfortunately, they are not able to force people to adopt them. That’s where the research stops. With a truly diverse team, if everyone were represented from the get-go, I firmly believe we would have come up with technologies that are easily adoptable.

There are a number of reasons why: number one is access to opportunities. Sometimes it starts at primary school. Sometimes you are not told that you could be an engineer or a scientist. That’s changing, because now you have a lot of universities which have various engagements with communities to let them know of the opportunities available.

When I was working at the University of Manchester, I was a Fellow for inclusion. I used to go to communities and schools to talk about universities and the options available, how you could be an engineer, you could be a scientist. You don’t have to be white. You could be there. So that’s one challenge.