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New Energy World™
New Energy World™ embraces the whole energy industry as it connects and converges to address the decarbonisation challenge. It covers progress being made across the industry, from the dynamics under way to reduce emissions in oil and gas, through improvements to the efficiency of energy conversion and use, to cutting-edge initiatives in renewable and low-carbon technologies.
Diversity remains a priority for the energy sector
15/3/2023
6 min read
Feature
It’s not all about technology and carbon. International Energy Week also included weighty sessions on people, skills, training, and workforce diversity and inclusion. Nick Cottam listened in for New Energy World.
The energy sector is more diverse, more inclusive, more culturally aware and more people-focused than ever before. It employs more women, more female engineers as well as those in the so-called softer disciplines, and it delves deeper into the needs of local communities. But there is still some way to go. This brave new world of a more measured, more discursive, more distributed sector was at the centre of a lively debate on the final day of International Energy Week as part of the ‘Bringing communities together’ session.
Away from the nuts and bolts of the energy transition, the session provided a platform to reflect on the people side of the business. As Lydia Malley, Head of Training at the Energy Institute (EI), commented: ‘Equipping people with the right skills is one of the biggest challenges in keeping the transition on track.’ According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), 60% of energy jobs in the future would require some form of post-secondary training – ‘I want the EI to be central in addressing that bottleneck,’ she said.
In its latest World Energy Employment report, the IEA notes that a staggering 65 million people work in the energy sector, 2% of the total labour force. This number, it writes, represents a decline in those working in oil and gas and a rise to over 50% of the total workforce of people employed in clean energy. Diversity is not only desirable but an absolute requirement if the sector is to meet the demand for a growing workforce, which has to both understand and implement the transition.