Red Rock Power commits to improving gender balance with POWERful Women pledge

Red Rock Power commits to improving gender balance with POWERful Women pledge

Red Rock Power Limited, the Scotland-based renewable and sustainable energy company, has announced its target for raising the number of women in its business, in an effort to improve gender balance across all levels of the organisation by 2030.

The full pledge published with the POWERful Women Initiative [2] is:

Red Rock Power Limited is committed to the professional development of our female employees and continuing to tackle the issue of gender inequality within the wider renewables industry. We aim to achieve a 50-50 gender balance within our business, with at least a third of management level roles held by women, by 2030.

Furthermore, we are committed to supporting initiatives which encourage more women to pursue STEM subjects and careers in STEM or renewables through school, further and higher education interaction, apprenticeships and graduate and post-graduate placements.

Guy Madgwick, CEO of Red Rock Power Limited, said:

“Our inclusive culture and dynamic workforce create greater opportunities to learn from different experiences and approaches to how we do things, giving us an advantage in the constantly evolving renewables industry and is something we are very proud of. As the business grows, we have steadily increased the number of female employees to more than a third in recent years however this is an ongoing effort and we hope to achieve a 50-50 balance by 2030. Our aim is to attract more girls and women into a career in renewables, while also supporting the growth and development of our existing employees, with the hope that they will become future industry leaders.

“Achieving a greater gender balance is a key ambition, however our desire to see an inclusive and diverse industry delves much deeper and we will continue to strive towards a better representation of both genders, ethnicities and the LBGT community by raising awareness of the industry as a positive environment to work in for everyone.”

Louise Kingham, Board Member of POWERful Women and Chief Executive of the Energy Institute, said;

“We welcome Red Rock Power’s public pledge to better balance in its business. Clear and robust leadership from companies is essential in driving diversity in the UK’s energy sector so that we tap the huge pool of female talent available and meet the challenges ahead. Setting targets means that progress is measurable, and we look forward to sharing Red Rock Power’s work as it advances towards its goals.”

Statistics from 2019 on gender balance at senior levels in the UK’s energy companies show that progress across the sector is slow:

• Women still occupy only 16% of board seats (a marginal increase from 13% in 2018);
• Women still occupy only 6% of executive board seats (no improvement);
• 42% of the companies have no women on their boards at all (a small improvement from 50% in 2018).

POWERful Women will be publishing updated statistics in early May 2020.

To date, 27 companies have made a POWERful Women pledge on improving the gender balance of their organisation [3] and in 2018 a coalition of leading energy CEOs came together to make a public commitment to improve gender balance in their own companies and across the energy industry.