Education & workforce development |
Meaningful engagement
The hydropower industry has a major opportunity to re-emerge as an exciting space for innovation by engaging and working with young people. According to Student Energy, the world’s largest youth-led energy organisation, meaningful engagement is key to a sustainable future
Above: The culminating event of the recently concluded Student Energy Summit (SES 2023) at COP28 Dubai in December 2023. SES 2023 brought together over 600 youth delegates from all over the world to collaborate and take action in the energy transition.
WITH A NETWORK OF over 50,000 young people in over 120 countries, Student Energy is the world’s largest youth-led organisation working on energy, empowering young people who are accelerating the transition to a sustainable and equitable future. Meaningful engagement of young people, the organisation says, is key to a sustainable future for the hydropower industry. In 2009, three students organised the first
International Student Energy Summit, driven by a vision to bring young people together to learn about and take action to transform the energy system. Now, 15 years on, Student Energy has grown into a fully- fledged youth-led organisation, with a diverse range of programmes that supports emerging young leaders at all phases of their education and career journey.
28 | March 2024 |
www.waterpowermagazine.com
A youth perspective As a global youth-led organisation working with young
people in all kinds of energy contexts, we find that youth are often grappling with the two realities of the hydropower industry. It is a fact that hydropower remains the largest
renewable energy source globally, with the IEA predicting that it will continue to add capacity and remain the largest renewable energy source on the path to net zero by 2050. At the same time, youth are seeing a great deal of uncertainty and concern about the future of mega-hydro projects, with some climate advocates going so far as to even call into question whether large-scale hydropower is “renewable” after all, following studies which have analysed lifecycle emissions and found that methane (a greenhouse gas
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