Ep:5 Energy

Okay, so we looked at energy as part of the Feminist Green New Deal policy work because it is essential to life.

It isn't devolved, but there are quite a lot of Welsh government policies and schemes in place to try and promote a transition to renewable energy out of more traditional energy forms, oil, gas, etc.

And, you know, there's two aspects.

There's the energy itself and the transition to a green economy.

And then there's also the kind of work in that growing energy industry.

So there's How do we ensure that women are involved both in the transition? And the European Energy Authority has done a piece of work saying, well, women are involved in energy because they are consumers, producers and decision makers, except actually they're much more consumers than they are decision makers.

They are not leading this transition process.

And we need women's voices in the decision making that we make around new renewable projects and how they are conducted.

And then secondly, there are lots of opportunities for highly skilled work in renewable energy industries, not just the very technical engineering stuff, but energy assessment, project design, project management, etc., So how will we get people into those industries that have been quite closed? The old energy industries are very traditional, very kind of white male, older workers in gas and oil, etc., as it was in coal before the transition out of coal.

So we need to...

To meet the skills needs that we have, we have to ensure a diversity of people coming into those industries or we just won't get the skills.

And also we obviously want everybody, as many people as possible from such a wide variety of backgrounds to be able to take advantage of potentially higher skilled work.

And just coming to the bigger picture from an Oxfam Cymru perspective, it's energy as a part of our climate, how we use energy, how we produce energy, but also looking at resources.

poverty and inequality in Wales and actually how difficult it is to be a consumer of energy when it is so expensive.

Yeah, there's a really great report by the Bevan Foundation that looked at fuel poverty in 2024 and finds that that particularly lone parents, 86.4% of whom are women, are struggling to meet the costs of energy.

And also households where there's a disabled person find it very difficult to pay for their energy and to meet those increased costs.

The Bevan report's, you know, quite sanguine, really.

It talks about, you know, women kind of managing, often being the managers of energy in the household, and that, you know, if they are in poverty, when they've not eaten themselves and they've made sure the kids eat, you know, when they've turned down all the lights and saved as much energy as they can, they're the ones that will then turn off the heating, if you like.

Yeah.

So it's, you know, the fuel poverty and then being cold can have really deleterious health impacts, you know, particularly for older people as well.

It feels like one of those things as well that people tend to suffer in silence around.

I suppose it's like there's a shame, isn't there, to say, you know, I can't afford to...

It's either I'm choosing to eat or heat my home.

And that, especially in the financial situation this country's in at the moment, will be a very common reality for many, many people that you would not consider to be in poverty, so to speak, you know.

So it is going to have more of an impact than I think people realise.