Doing more for gender balance in the energy sector – BIEE’s first Women in Energy Breakfast Session

For the first time in BIEE history, this year’s BIEE Research Conference Programme includes a Women in Energy Breakfast Session. This new session format will feature a panel of three distinguished female energy experts and leaders from academia, policy and industry who will share their personal insights on three issues: personal strategies for women’s careers in the energy sector, corporate culture promoting diversity; and opportunities and challenges for women’s career advancements in consumer-centred energy systems. Already 70 BIEE participants have registered for this cutting-edge breakfast panel taking place on the morning of the second conference day, September 19th. This session will provide an exceptional opportunity to engage with these leading women of the field and network with other female energy professionals.

Why did we feel the need to organise this event? We all remember attending energy related meetings where the room was full of male attendees and women voices were hard to get by. But with all the changes taking place in the energy sector, there is nowadays also more attention to gender balance, may that be in projects, in workshops, on panels, in research funding calls and sometimes even in board rooms. There are also exciting initiatives underway promoting women in energy, such as the POWERful Women initiative or the Women’s Energy Network. But there is still a long way to go to genuine gender balance. We therefore thought that engaging with three leading female experts across academia, policy and industry could help to support this trend. Our session will be a great way to get tips on how to progress the careers of female professionals, learn about what other organisations are doing to improve their diversity, and network with today’s and tomorrow’s female energy leaders.

In doing so, the BIEE “Women in Energy” event aspires to be an inspiring, engaging and fun session, aimed at female BIEE participants, and open to all – everyone is welcome. We are convinced it will be worthwhile to get up an hour early to listening to the fascinating insights from three leading women in the field. We are extremely thrilled to have the following outstanding speakers at our first ever “Women in Energy” Breakfast Panel:

• From Academia: Catherine Mitchell (Professor of Energy Policy, University of Exeter)
• From Policy: Vivienne Geard (Deputy Director, Head of Heat & Business Energy Analysis at BEIS) and
• From Industry: Juliet Davenport (CEO & Founder of Good Energy).

The session is kindly sponsored by Energy UK and its moderator Barbara Vest (Director of Generation at Energy UK) will invite all three panellists to share their personal insights on the following three questions:

1. Personal strategies: What are your top-three recommendations for women’s career advancement in the energy field (must and must-nots) and strategies for coping with failure?
2. Corporate culture: What more could universities, companies, the public sector and other organisations active in energy do to promote diversity in their organisational cultures?
3. Conference theme: What are the opportunities and challenges for women’s career advancement arising from moving from a traditional fossil fuel based energy system to a consumer-centred, renewables based one?

After the opening statements there will be a chance for everyone in the audience to engage with the panellists in a dedicated Q&A session, allowing for questions and comments to further engage on these issues. As the event takes place prior to the morning keynote (and as such pretty early) we will be sure to have coffee, tea and breakfast snacks. And, of course, we plan to close in time to be able to move to the nearby Auditorium for the morning keynote.

On behalf of the organizing committee, we are looking forward to welcoming you at this year’s first run of the “Women in Energy” Breakfast Session – and we will be eager to hear from you on how to develop this new format further in the future.

The theme of the 2018 conference of the British Institute of Energy Economics (BIEE) is “Putting consumers at the heart of the energy system”.  Within this conference the “Women in Energy” session will take place in the morning of day 2 of the conference – on Wednesday September 19, 2018 from 8-9am. The session is kindly sponsored by Energy UK, and has been organised by the BIEE subcommittee “Women in Energy Breakfast Session” led by Karoline Rogge (University of Sussex) and supported by Nazmiye Ozkan (Cranfield University), Peter Stewart (Interfax) and Paul Ekins (UCL).

If you are interested and have not yet signed up, then make sure to get in touch with conference@biee.org asap to secure your spot. Participation is limited to those registered, as we really want to make sure there is enough coffee for everyone who dares to get up early to participate in this exciting new event. Hope to see you there!