#OnAssignment at COP23: A new global partnership empowering women to lead the transition to clean energy
By Alexis Tubb, Project Manager, Clinton Climate Initiative
[Editor’s Note: This post is part of a recurring series of perspectives on the impact of our work by staff and partners of the Clinton Foundation.]
For the past week, I’ve been in Bonn, Germany for the United Nations’ most important climate change conference of the year — COP23. Today’s emphasis at the meeting is on gender inclusion, and as a woman in the clean energy space, I’m feeling a sense of empowerment I’ve never experienced before.
I’m also feeling a renewed urgency. Fresh in the minds of COP23 participants are the back-to-back hurricanes that pummeled the Caribbean in a span of two weeks and the fact that global warming leads to more extreme weather events. In the wake of the devastation left behind by Hurricanes Irma and Maria, there’s a growing resolve to set the world on a path towards reducing our warming impact on climate vulnerable countries — especially island nations. This critical need has led many at COP23 to ask how can we accelerate renewable energy development.
While several ideas have been put forth this week, one in particular resonates strongly: Involve more women.
Women working in the energy sector hold disproportionately fewer leadership positions globally: Women hold 24 percent of senior management roles globally and only 14 percent of senior management positions at the top 200 worldwide power and utility companies. We at the Clinton Climate Initiative’s Islands Energy Program, which is helping island nations transition to renewable energy, have found women to be key drivers of clean energy efforts. To ensure that the clean energy sector develops the most innovate solutions to climate change possible, we need a greater diversity of perspectives — including the perspectives of women — at the highest levels of leadership. Our team has seen many women managing key processes of clean energy projects in the island nations we work, yet are not recognized with the formal leadership roles they need in order to deliver greatest impact.
Women represent an untapped talent that could — if harnessed — accelerate clean energy development. The absence of women at the top isn’t only an injustice. It’s a climate change risk.
In February 2016, the Clinton Climate Initiative founded the first network of its kind to empower rising women leaders working in island energy sectors — the Women in Renewable Energy Network (WIRE Network). The WIRE Network provides a common platform for women working in islands to support and mentor each other. It also offers technical and leadership skills development opportunities for women looking to propel their careers faster and further.
In its first year, the WIRE Network grew to over 350 members, and several of the WIRE Network’s mentoring program participants received promotions that they directly attributed to their growth through participating in the network. Motivated by their mentors, Jamaican Transmission & Distribution Engineer Tanya Hylton earned her Project Management Professional certification, a license needed to advance her career, and Hannah Olmberg-Soesman recently became Chief Executive Officer of a solar company and led an all-woman solar energy installation in rural Suriname.
The WIRE Network is not alone in recognizing gender inclusion as an imperative, and at COP23 41 organizations have united together under the common belief that empowering women is key to transitioning to clean energy. This coalition is launching the Sustainable Energy for All (SEforALL) People-Centered Accelerator, bringing together a group of like-minded partners who are committed to seeing the full and equal participation of women, from CEOs to rural farmers, in promoting clean energy efforts globally.
SEforALL works directly with the United Nations to ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy for all, and they see women as key to achieving this objective. It’s also critical to advancing UN Sustainable Development Goal 7 on Access to Energy, which aims to engage all people — both men and women — to achieve access to sustainable and reliable energy for all.
As we celebrate COP23’s Gender Day, we — all 41 organizations — recognize that we can only achieve our climate change interventions with the full participation of women. We commit to empowering women, and thereby safeguarding our planet.
