We are an organisation with an express mission to decarbonise our energy system and to tackle climate change. With that mission comes the responsibility to ensure that as we decarbonise, we do so in a just way, recognising that climate justice is a key driver behind our activities.
The energy industry has not historically been a pioneer for diversity, equality and inclusion, and we have actively tried to change this over the years, through several areas:
- our Women in Renewable Energy Network (ReWiRE) has worked to address gender balance through events, thought leadership, and mentoring programmes.
- we are always improving our recruitment practices to make our positions accessible to as many people as possible. In particular, we are constantly developing our internship programme to make it open to a wide group of people and offered at the living wage with upfront payments for relocation costs.
- this year we are actively seeking to offer placements to undergraduates who would not otherwise have the opportunity to work in this sector.
However, like many other people across the world, our team were moved by the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020. We have spent time reflecting as a team, challenging ourselves to understand what we need to change and what we can achieve as an organisation, as well as what needs to change in our sector. Whilst we don’t know the answers yet, we do know this includes:
- History: explore what has and hasn’t worked at Regen and in the energy industry
- Impact: understand how we can use our work and our position in the industry, for example by addressing climate/energy justice
- Internal practices: explore actions that Regen can undertake to encourage diversity and inclusion
- Recruitment: understand how diversity and inclusion are fundamental to a thriving, influential organisation
- External/events: use our outward facing role and presence to encourage and promote diverse voices, using our five-point pledge
- Accountability: use our non-executive board of directors to question and challenge us in this area
- Communicate: collaborate with other organisations in our sector that are going through a similar journey
This is just the start of the journey. We will update publicly on our progress and we welcome feedback from anyone working in our sector, collaborating with Regen, or applying to our job posts.
As we continue to learn and discuss these topics, we will write updates through our blogs (see below).
Event pledge
We have developed a five-point pledge to improve diversity and inclusion in the work we do. We recognise that this places more emphasis on gender balance and acknowledge that diversity of race, socio-economic background and neurodiversity, for example, require more complex solutions and we will work on how to address this in our events and meetings. The five-point pledge is as follows:
- We will ensure full disability access to all in-person events and provide for the needs of people with sight or hearing impediments.
- The selection of speakers, panels and chairs for events organised by Regen will be balanced by gender and proactive in seeking participants that represent a diverse audience.
- Team members will only participate in events organised by others if the panels and speakers are at least gender balanced and (it can be demonstrated) there has been a proactive attempt to represent a diverse audience.
- Regen will look for opportunities to promote diversity and inclusivity through our communications and engagement activities, including language translation where appropriate.
- Team members will actively encourage clients or stakeholders to consider how they can be more inclusive and increase the diversity of participants in meetings and events.
We will monitor our progress against this pledge and when, despite our best endeavours, we do not achieve our target, we will investigate and explain why.
