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Erusa Adizie
2 minute read time.

Having worked in various energy fields my whole career I have been thinking about the workforce of the future needed to deliver net zero.  With the Green Jobs Taskforce that was launched in 2020 and the recent Chris Skidmore Net Zero report reiterating the need for support in the development of “green skills” there is acknowledgement of what is required but there doesn’t yet seem to be clarity as to how we will get there.

I know there are so many challenges but also opportunities in the energy transition journey with emerging essential fields such as hydrogen, energy storage, and carbon capture to name a few and although major advances have been made, there is much still left to do to drive real change but where do we get the workforce from to do this and how do we make sure that it consists of diverse voices that can develop the systems needed?

I do feel like (and have seen) that when diversity and inclusion is mentioned, there is some reluctance to participate but I firmly believe that if we don’t widen and engage more we will be missing out.

Have you ever looked back through your career and wondered what led you to where you are and whether you are where you are meant to be?  When I think back to first entering the workforce, I don’t think really had a 5/10/20 year plan.

I wonder whether if I had been more aware of the opportunities in low carbon fields what the outcome would have been. I am very happy with where I have found myself as each role has led me to where I am today. From oil and gas, power generation to sustainability then on to professional development and chartership.

I see passionate and motivated young people and think about how if that was combined with the benefits of the clarity and the awareness of opportunities for STEM in decarbonisation, the results would be undeniable.

I love talking about my career and how I got to where I am now and I hope this episode of Engineering Success in which I talk about my job as well as my previous roles and experiences can inspire someone:

https://www.jaemiehutton.com/erusaadizie

https://open.spotify.com/episode/6xfpPStmsOx2iZdwHSwwml

What are your thoughts – how can we drive the development of an inclusive and diverse workforce for a just energy transition?

  • in reply to John J

    HI John,

    I really believe that for the energy transition we will need to include multiple renewable energy sources to enable the energy transition.  A lot of these will be location dependent but I agree that we should be open to considering all available.  Very important for a swift and cost effective transition.

  • in reply to JLawrie

    Hi Joe, Thanks for your comments! It’s interesting to get the viewpoints from a recent graduate and it seems like it is similar to my graduating experiences – I had hoped the starting salaries would rise in order to attract diverse people into energy. This is somewhat disappointing as I guess being in this industry, I see the opportunities in a lot of different energy related fields.

    Thanks for the link – I had never heard of Biomason and had a review of their technology which was unique.  Something to discuss with the team as a method to mitigate our cement making operations. I think that a lot of people in the building materials industry feel that to ultimately decarbonise cement operations, carbon capture utilisation and storage is essential…

  • Hi Erusa, I haven't listened to your podcast yet. Busier in retirement than I was while working! Having been in the oceanographic engineering field for many years, I am constantly appalled that the energy potential of our coastal waters has been both ignored and starved of government support. I would encourage young engineers to get involved in tidal stream energy generation. We have some of the strongest tidal streams in the world around our coasts and generators can be installed without barrages or dams. The advantages of tides are that a) they are predictable and regular, unlike wind and solar generation; b) tidal stream times vary at different locations around the coast as the tidal 'wave' progresses around the coastline; c) the energy flow from a tidal stream is much denser than wind or solar.

  • Hi Erusa!

    I just wanted to say thank you for sharing your podcast interview! I'd not have come across it had you not taken the time to post it here.

    To your question regarding ensuring that diverse voices are integral to the development of the technologies we all need, I’d love to feel confident that more organisations were being pro-active and effective about eliminating economic discrimination (such as, but by all means not only, the multitude of pay-gaps and hiring discrimination). Do you think this would help bring more diverse voices to our working lives?

    From personal experience as a recent (2018) graduate working in decarbonisation/sustainable engineering, my peers and I that have been offered roles in engineering for salaries which we could not afford to live on (even for jobs with the requirement of a first-class masters degree in engineering), particularly in 'innovation' industries, which has proven demotivating and I do not think will have helped increase the diversity of voices in the profession. To be sure, our experience is not a representative sample, and perhaps we have just been unlucky regarding the organisations we have interacted with.

    Furthermore, we know that outside of engineering this applies to many diverse groups of highly skilled people at the moment in countries all over the world far more acutely than perhaps experienced by many in engineering at the moment - I see this as something which would support diverse voices in general, not only in engineering industries.

    Nevertheless, as you mentioned in your podcast interview, a significant proportion of the people we trained with at university never entered the engineering workforce, opting for higher paid jobs in finance and consultancy - which is understandable given both present circumstances as well as those experienced during the previous 15 years.

    -----------------------------------------------------

    Whilst listening I was thinking about the challenges faced by your company and industry on the road to net zero. It reminded me of efforts to decarbonise cement production using bio-inspired methods (a favourite topic of mine) and if you have a minute to take a look, I'd be very interested to hear your thoughts about the technology in general, from a technical perspective and a commercial perspective. After all, a sustainable solution isn't much help if no-one will ever be able to afford to make the most of it.

    https://biomason.com/

    Full disclosure I'm not associated with the company at all. My interest is from the bio-inspired side and that it's not so often that the chance to ask an industry expert for their insight comes along, so I wanted to at least ask - I hope that's ok.

    -----------------------------------------------------

    Thanks for your time!

    Joe

  • in reply to Terry Robson

    Hi Terry, yes decarbonising the materials sector is a challenge but it is the same with all of the other hard to abate sectors. I think that you are right in that we all need to be more aware of environmental and sustainable issues as well as really considering all of the options available. At some point we probably won’t have a choice but to go with the low carbon option anyway…

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