Last year, Aura partnered with the Supergen Offshore Renewable Energy Hub to produce a scoping report into the inequalities which exist in academia and in the offshore wind industry.
The report, outlined an action plan which focusses on short, medium and longer-term initiatives to help improve equality and diversity in the engineering sector.
Louise Smith, Director at Aura and Dr Mockute’s mentor in the new research project, said: “The NERC Knowledge Exchange Fellowship award to Agota is a huge encouragement to her and to other young women in academia and industry, where there is marked lack of representation by women and ethnic minorities. We are immensely proud of her and we know that she is going to make an impact on the offshore wind industry through her Fellowship.
“We congratulate NERC on selecting Agota from among so many applicants. She is a gifted scientist with excellent communications and interpersonal skills, and we believe that her position in the University’s Energy & Environment Institute and Aura collaboration puts her in a unique position to be able to ensure good coordination on the challenges and solutions to a sustainable expansion of offshore wind – particularly where the environment is concerned.
“Bringing together stakeholders to work on the natural environment and offshore wind to address these challenges comes at a critical time as offshore wind technology is set to grow exponentially.
“Aura’s role in the Humber Cluster is to act as a catalyst for collaboration and innovation in the renewable energy sector and particularly to deliver the commitments set out in the Offshore Wind Sector Deal. Offshore Wind is a new industry and has the opportunity to really do things differently. I hope we can work together to really change things and meet the challenge ahead. Agota’s Fellowship award by NERC demonstrates exactly this.”
The UK Government has a legally binding commitment to bring greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050.
The Humber has a central role to play in supporting the Government’s net zero targets as it is the largest industrial and highest carbon emitting cluster in the UK with an ambitious target of achieving net zero by 2040.
Offshore wind is the UK’s main source of sustainable renewable energy. In the last decade globally-leading development, centred on the Humber, has seen UK offshore wind grow to 10 Gigawatts of production, enough to power over 30% of total UK electricity needs.
The growth of offshore wind in the UK is set to continue exponentially towards 100 GW by 2050.