ACCEPT’s Senior Officer Dr Hoyyen Chan was invited to speak at the Climate-Energy-Women Nexus Webinar on 20 August 2020 that was organised by the University Teknologi MARA (UiTM). This event is part of the training programme, entitled “E-WIRE: Empowering Women in Renewable Energy”, which was funded by Malaysian National Commission for United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). This training aimed to enhance the women-energy nexus, particularly women in the solar PV industry. This is in line with the ACCEPT’s interest, and thus, the event was also officially supported by ACCEPT.

The webinar was officiated by the Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Research and Innovation, Prof. Dr Mohd Nazip Suratman, and moderated by the E-WIRE Programme Chair, Dr Azlin Mohd Azmi. The webinar started from insight sharing from Dr Wei-Nee Chan, Chief Strategic Officer of Sustainable Energy Development Authority (SEDA) Malaysia on “Flattening the Climate Curve: Status of Global & Local Renewables”. Dr Chen discussed the global views of energy development and followed by the latest Renewable Energy (RE) initiatives in Malaysia. Then, the presentation was followed by Ms Chrisrtine Lins, the Executive Director of the Global Women’s Network for the Energy Transition (GWNET) on the “Energy and Gender Perspectives”. She discussed the roles of women in the energy sector and how women have been contributing to the sector.

The nexus webinar then complemented by the presentation of Dr Chan on “Climate Change Communication in Accelerating the Low-Carbon Transition” in which she shared the popularity analysis using Google Trends to compare the relative popularity search items of “climate change” with the “Covid-19” from 2004 to the present. This followed by her arguments on the gaps in communication by using the COVID-19 as the backdrop, she gave some of the examples in addressing the climate crisis, actions, and urgency. All of these were linked to the energy transition, and she showed choices of decisions in planning the pandemic recovery plan. Thereby, she shared the benefits of decarbonisation compared to the consequences of the conventional pathway. She ended her presentation by encouraging the audience to start the climate action from the individual that taking humanity as the key motivation and emphasised that women would be a crucial role in cultivating the character of humanity.

The event concluded with several questions from the audience that the discussions were around renewable energy development, challenges of women working in the renewable energy industry, and the energy transition in Southeast Asia.

For more details, please access the presentation file here