Centre for Public Policy

Blog by Dr Hannah Salamon, Research Associate at the Centre for Public Policy, University of Glasgow.

The UK government’s Clean Power 2030 Action Plan, released in December, presents a highly ambitious pathway to achieving a clean energy system by 2030. Meeting it in just 5 years will require “rapid deployment of new clean energy capacity across the whole of the UK” (p. 10), including the provision of at least 80 infrastructure projects and £40 billion of investment per year. These massive investments will have huge economic impacts, and the report emphasizes that “communities that host clean energy infrastructure should benefit from it” (p. 12). This type of political will and financial backing demonstrates the UK’s commitment to both achieving net zero and to distributing its benefits across society. Yet, an unaddressed challenge on the path to net zero is the gender inequality which persists in the green energy sector.

Women are predicted to make up just 25% or less of the UK’s green energy jobs by 2030. The offshore wind sector currently employs less than 21% women, while exact estimates of women’s participation in the onshore wind, solar, biomethane, and geothermal sectors aren’t even known.

This marginalisation of women in green energy is problematic from two perspectives: first, it threatens the success of the energy transition from a workforce perspective. Second, it withholds the benefits that come along with the fast growth of the green energy sector (financial, social, and political) from women.

Skills needed to perform green jobs are in short supply in the UK, with a deficit of 200,000 jobs predicted in the energy sector alone during the critical period leading up to 2030. The looming inadequacies of the current workforce pose serious problems for a successful energy transition, and while this problem is widely acknowledged, its gendered nature is paid little attention.

Some existing explanations for the gender gap are that women have lower interest and knowledge of green jobs, and are less represented in STEM disciplines; Nesta finds that women “thought they would be perceived as less suitable by potential employers for both STEM and non-STEM green jobs than men did” (p. 12).

Industries do not become massively gender segregated as a result only of individuals’ personal choices; there is much more yet to be understood about how gender inequalities are upheld across sectors and within government approaches. Because no solutions have been put forward to achieve this, we need an extensive research agenda exploring existing gender paradigms within green energy, and mechanisms to shift this paradigm, in order to increase women’s representation in high-paying and secure green energy jobs. In the meantime, company and government policy should grapple with the gender inequality inherent in their industries and start building solutions of their own.

Equally as important is the threat that gender inequality poses to ensuring equal distribution of the benefits of the green transition. By perpetuating the gender inequalities of the fossil fuel sector, women in the UK will be ill-placed to benefit from high-paying, stable jobs in green energy, which are growing at more than 5 times the rate of overall employment. High-level decisions made within and between energy companies and sectors will lack women’s voices. Pay gaps that perpetuate in energy sectors will worsen, and social, cultural, and political benefits associated with these booming sectors will be relegated to men.

Taking a gendered lens to the ambitious approach to the energy transition reveals the additional challenges that need to be met head on: in 2025, women are still remarkably absent not just from the sectors that will make the green energy transition happen, but from the policies that are shaping the energy transition. It is important to uncover both why this gender gap exists as well as how it can be counteracted. Findings need to be linked up with industry and policy communities to ensure implementation of gender equality initiatives that support women and promote equality in the green energy transition, and break up the existing “boy’s clubs” that have dominated the energy industry in the past. Only this way will the green energy transition be successful and the benefits be equally distributed.

 

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First published: 22 January 2025