IGNITE Network+: the £1m university initiative to boost diversity in the energy sector

Educate yourself, ‘do the work’, LISTEN, and never stop learning”, yeah?

“Diversity is our strength” are Sadiq Khan’s famous words about London.

Sadly, the same doesn’t seem to be true for the energy sector, which apparently needs £1,020,388 in taxpayer funding to remedy its lack of diversity.

Enter the IGNITE Network+ at the University of Strathclyde (its Civil and Environmental Engineering department, to be specific).

The four-year project is funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), one of the UKRI’s nine research councils.

When it comes to UKRI, I usually focus on AHRC (and sometimes ESRC) as it tends to have the most egregious examples of ideological funding.

But clearly the hard sciences aren’t immune from wokery, as you can see in the IGNITE Network+’s abstract:

The current lack of diversity in energy researchers stems not from a lack of interest, talent or ambition in underrepresented individuals, but from systemic inequalities in UK systems and institutions.

Researchers even hope diversity can tackle climate change:

To achieve the changes to energy systems needed to meet net-zero carbon by 2050 requires innovation, and its translation into industry, at pace. Increased diversity in energy researchers will significantly improve our chances of success.

Central to IGNITE Network’s strategy is handing out hundreds of thousands of taxpayer money to projects such as “Did This Really Happen?! - Fighting sexism in science one comic strip at a time”:

I’m sure taxpayers will be delighted to see that most of the research team aren’t even in the UK:

Oh well! At least they’ve shown everyone why female scientists should be taken seriously: