Join us at the IET for an electrifying day of celebration dedicated to women in energy – past, present and future – with an evening keynote by Professor Dame Julia King, Baroness Brown of Cambridge, chair of both the Climate Change Adaptation Committee and the Carbon Trust. Register here.

Afternoon panel sessions, with refreshments: 1pm – 5pm
Evening keynote lecture, drinks and networking: 6pm – 9pm

(During the registration process, please select to attend either the afternoon panel sessions (£15), the evening keynote lecture (sponsored), or both.)

Speakers at the afternoon panel sessions – all passionate advocates of diversity in engineering – include Anne Locker, Sahar Danesh and Ann Oakley (session 1); and Lesley Rudd, Yasmin Ali, Kenneth Dunn and Titi Oliyide (session 2). The panels are chaired, respectively, by Henrietta Heald and Dawn Bonfield, and each concludes with a Q&A.

The event marks the centenary of the founding on 12 November 1924 of the Electrical Association for Women (EAW), with Caroline Haslett at the helm. The EAW set out to educate all women in the new science of electricity, to relieve them from domestic drudgery, and to liberate them to pursue careers outside the home.

Branches sprang up across the UK and elsewhere, and the organisation – which helped to introduce labour-saving electrical items into millions of households – continued to thrive for 60 years, becoming a powerful engine of 20th-century feminism.

Building on the unique legacy of the EAW, Electric Dreams 2024 is a nationwide festival that highlights the achievements of women working in the energy sector today and examines the nature of their increasingly important roles in the transition to Net Zero.

Panel 1: What did the electricity pioneers of the past do for us?

Anne Locker, the Library and Archives Manager at the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET), relates the history of the Electrical Association for Women (EAW) and how it transformed the national conversation around electricity in the home.

Sahar Danesh, a chartered engineer and senior manager at the British Standards Institution (BSI) specialising in digital and emerging technologies, explains the role women have played in shaping standards to ensure that everyday household items are safe to use.

Ann Oakley, professor of sociology and social policy at University College London (UCL), is the author of more than 40 books, most recently The Science of Housework. She sets the achievements of the EAW in the context of the movement for science-based housework that swept Europe, North America and other countries in the early 20th century.

Henrietta Heald (chair) is the author of Magnificent Women and Their Revolutionary Machines, a centenary history of the Women’s Engineering Society.

Panel 2: Women and the energy transition

Yasmin Ali, a chemical engineer who develops and manages renewable energy projects, has delivered more than 100 talks about engineering and energy. She reveals the mission that inspired her first book, Power Up, which takes readers across the globe to reveal the bigger picture behind international energy systems.

Kenneth Dunn, an educator and community development activist, outlines how the introduction of a heat-retention cook bag – made by local women from local organic waste – has transformed the cooking process and energy use in rural areas of sub-Saharan Africa.

Titi Oliydie, a senior process safety engineer, was named in 2023 the IET Young Woman Engineer of the Year. She demystifies the facts and fallacies about the green hydrogen industry, where she is a safety and operations lead in innovative electrolyser technology.

Dawn Bonfield (chair) is professor of practice in engineering at King’s College London, working with young engineers to address the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Lesley Rudd, the Chief Executive of Electrical Safety First, has worked in the energy industry all of her career. Lesley explains in this presentation how ESF strives to achieve its mission of ensuring everyone in the UK can use electricity safely in their home and provides some insights into her own career and what influenced it.

Public lecture by Baroness Brown of Cambridge

Together in electric dreams: tackling climate change

2023 was the hottest year on record – and 2024 is on track to beat it. We are seeing the global impacts of the changing climate. In 2022 we had 40oC temperatures in the UK, in September 2023 we had record temperatures globally – 1.77o above pre-industrial levels, and in April 2024 in India over 900 million people queued to vote in a 47oC heatwave made 45 times more likely by human-induced climate change.

Urgent action is required if we are to have a chance of delivering the goals of the Paris Agreement.  Historically the UK has been a leader in climate action, directed by the Climate Change Act 2008, and the UK’s legislated 5 yearly Carbon Budgets. The 2020s were to be the decade of climate action with ambitious emissions reduction commitments set for 2030 in the UK’s Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) submitted to COP 26 in Glasgow. We are almost halfway through the decade and we have some catching up to do.

Underpinning the decarbonisation of our economy is electrification – involving dramatic changes to our use of energy, decarbonising the electricity system and doubling its current size in the next 25 years.

The lecture will look at the growing impacts of climate change, underlining the need for urgent action. It will examine the implications of electrification for the UK’s path to Net Zero by 2050. Finally, it will touch on the need for adaptation even if we achieve the global goal of the Paris Agreement.