You're passionate about renewable energy. How can you embed diversity and inclusion in its core values?

Start by promoting diverse hiring practices to ensure a variety of perspectives within your team. Encourage inclusive policies and training programs that foster a respectful and supportive work environment. Engage with communities to understand their unique energy needs and challenges. Support initiatives and partnerships that uplift underrepresented groups in the renewable energy sector.

Inclusive Hiring: Prioritize diverse hiring practices to reflect varied backgrounds and perspectives. Equitable Opportunities: Ensure equal access to training, promotions, and leadership roles. Community Engagement: Partner with underserved communities for energy projects and educational outreach. Cultural Awareness: Foster a workplace culture that respects and celebrates diverse traditions and viewpoints. Accessible Innovation: Develop renewable solutions that are affordable and beneficial to all communitie

An important excerpt I took away from the #YES2023 in Nairobi featuring heavyweights in the energy sector is the approach to inclusion which calls youths, professionals and everyone interested to “Come as they are”… and not necessarily with all the skills. Because there are training opportunities, workshops and other resources that would be available to energy enthusiasts in the various sectors. Followed by the Nairobi-CapeTown-Lagos-Egypt summit later last year, we deep dived into the need for all professionals finding an intersection in the energy sector. The goal is not autonomy, it is collaboration.

There is a ton of really good advice out there about DEI generally. It has always seemed to me that the goal of hiring ought to be to recruit the best and the brightest. A priori, the distribution of the best and brightest has to be across all races and ethnicities. The challenge to inclusive hiring is to make sure you are seeing the resumes you need to see. Your immediate response to candidates you do see is one you can control: you can make sure you don’t discriminate based on gender, race or ethnic factors. The question of whether you are actually seeing resumes from a diverse candidate pool is harder to control. The second level question is whether you discriminate subsconciously. That is hard. Be aware that you might.

You may often screen candidates based on specific skills, such as accounting, financial modeling, regulatory experience. You may feel that gender, race or ethnicity could constitute a desirable skill in certain instances. What if you want to market more effectively to communities heavily skewed to those characteristics? Does it offend DEI principles to screen in that way? Should business owners be obliged to NOT screen in this way? I suspect that, if the screen is in favor of protected classes or minorities, such screening criteria might be fine for DEI purposes. If, however, the screen was to recruit someone with particular skills in marketing other demographics, it might not be DEI-approved. It’s complicated.

Renewable energy should not have any special needs in DEI terms. It is an industry like any other. It embeds in all kinds of communities and has broad impact across all demographics. If renewable energy projects look ‘like America’ then renewable energy recruitment ought to look like America. There are tax incentives for projects cited in certain census tracts - energy communities as defined in the Inflation Reduction Act. There tax incentives for projects in certain demographics with low income characteristics. These are examples of the government trying to skew investment in certain areas whose economics might not work otherwise. Those incentive seem well intended. Whether they work will be clearer in a few years. I hope they do.

The Inclusive Renewable Energy Youth Movement has one message; Community Engagement & Development. Since we have diverse communities, contexts and needs, solutions and approaches to problem solving must differ too but converging on the point of ecofriendly innovations. Most importantly, solutions must be human centered, allowing the people to have a say in their solutions approach.

Fostering partnerships with diverse organizations ensures that the benefits of renewable energy are accessible to all. Collaborating with community groups, populations, you deem as underrepresented, can help address obstacles and promote equity in the industry.