Progress on achieving gender balance within the renewable energy industry is moving "too slowly", an energy-focussed conference in Brussels heard on Thursday.
Speaking at the Net Zero Europe Conference, Director of battery technology at Exyte, Nicole Neub, said that while there has been improvement in terms of women entering the industry and working their way up to leadership positions, "the improvement is really too slow".
Neub was speaking at a panel focused on women's leadership within the renewable energy sector, alongside Susanne Pflug, President at Canadian Solar EMEA, and Laura Hanneken, Energy Storage Manager at Statkraft.
Hanneken added that while renewable energy is a topic that "many women are really excited about and motivated to be part of", equal gender representation is not something that you see in the sector, especially in leadership positions.
"I'm seeing a lot of very young, motivated women that are currently entering the industry, that are ready to step in, that want to see a change, that want to take responsibility themselves. What we need right now is senior leaders that are enabling them to forge their path in the energy industry," she said.
Culture change needed
Pflug emphasised that there is "still a lot to do" to support women moving up the career ladder within the renewable sector.
"In our company we have a lot of programs that help women to further develop, but the programs alone do not help, because they finish and then the women are still in the same position as before. What we need is in every organisation, a culture that allows women to step up, and it's a culture of inclusion and culture of openness, and a culture that where everyone feels that this is completely normal," she said.
She added that as well as encouraging girls to be interested in technology and engineering from a young age, sometimes concrete measures like quotas are the only thing to break the cycle of men being promoted over women.
"You will learn when you start your career that there are barriers for a woman at the very beginning for various reasons. Men might not want to allow you to step up for certain reasons, or it's difficult to change a job if you are a certain age – I'm sorry but sometimes the quota is the only thing that helps," she said.
Connecting China and Europe
Chinese President Xi Jinping meeting with President Michel and President von der Leyen at the EU-China summit in December 2023.
The Net Zero Europe conference, organised by Shanghai Metals Market (SMM), focused on bringing together businesses from both China and Europe who are working in the renewable sector, specifically in solar, battery and energy storage.
Based in Shanghai, SMM operates a platform that tracks the prices of mined metals (including cobalt and lithium used for batteries in the energy sector), as well as offering analysis, consultancy services and organising events.
Michael Jiang, Executive Vice President of SMM, said that the Brussels conference aimed to help Chinese manufacturers looking to expand into Europe, as well as European clients seeking more information about the Chinese market.
"Brussels is the centre of the Union, and most of the Chinese people would like to know about the local market. Chinese companies may not have so much knowledge about the requirements for compliance, the local taxes, but also how to co-operate with European companies," he said.
Despite ongoing tensions between the EU and China over import taxes for Chinese electric vehicles, Jiang said that in general there is a great interest in co-operation between Chinese and European companies.
"Not only for the Chinese enterprises but also for the European companies, they have great yearnings to co-operate with each other, and we believe that globalisation will be the future trend. So this is the main reason why the Chinese companies need to know more about local politics not only in Europe but also in the US and other places," he said.
