Meet Megan Euston-Brown
I thought it was fitting to start this new journey with featuring the woman who has held my hand since I started my career. Ms. Euston-Brown is a Director at Sustainable Energy Africa (SEA) an NGO based in Cape Town, South Africa. SEA promotes the development of an equitable low carbon, clean energy economy throughout sub Saharan African cities. Ms. Euston-Brown has been with SEA for over 16 years. To me, Ms. Euston-Brown happens to be one of the most brilliant women I know with her ability to connect to people and equally understand the technical components of the energy sector. She is my mentor whom I call upon more times than she wishes and yet is always happy to assist, lend an ear and if needed provide advice both at a professional and personal level.
Hi Meg, thank you so much for agreeing to speak to me and sharing your journey in the energy sector.
The energy sector is known to be dominated by men, who often hold engineering degrees. However, you actually hold a BA (Honours) degree and in your early years you worked in a different sector. Can you tell us a little about yourself and your journey that led you to join the sector and why have you stayed for so long especially with one organisation SEA?
The great thing about SEA is that its pioneering leaders (before my time!) recognized the need for a multi-disciplinary team: a sustainable energy future should be designed by and for the people who use that energy, rather than just a top-down, technical exercise. I had been in the area of land reform. I suppose both sectors are about transition and working with different parties, with different interests, to reach a new outcome.
Energy sector work is always changing and it is fascinating — energy is at the heart of everything and it is so wide-ranging. Learning and change requires trust and this requires relationship, so being in the sector over time helps. There are great people in the sector, really committed individuals who do incredible work.
I’m never bored. SEA is a dynamic organization — we strive to do excellent work, whilst experimenting to ensure that as an organization we reflect internally the type of society we are trying to build: responsible, learning, dynamic, inclusive and sustainable.
SEA works with cities, why is this important? What would you say are the main obstacles when it comes to working with cities and addressing energy challenges? Tell us about the work that you are doing to overcome these challenges in sub Saharan Africa.
Cities are strategically very significant because of their size and economic might. Cities represent an important check and balance to centralized, national power. This role, in terms of mandates and resources, is both an opportunity and a challenge and requires a careful ‘dance’. You will always find an amazingly rich seam of dedicated capacity at local government level, but their work is made hard by rapid urban in-migration, political interference and limited capacity and resources. Just ‘keeping the lights on’ is a challenge, let alone turning the ship around from fossil fuel intensive, sprawling cities with those on the margins struggling to access services, to sustainable and inclusive settlements.
SEA works at the strategy level, supporting Cities to understand their energy picture in order to begin directing it in more sustainable directions; it supports Cities with the implementation of technologies and the policy and administrative changes that are needed for a new energy future. We also look to the ongoing development of better access to clean, safe and affordable energy for households. In Polokwane, for example, this involved training four young, female entrepreneurs in ‘hot box’ manufacture with the idea of using municipal procurement of these as ‘energy services’ to be delivered into poor communities.
Currently, what are you working on that you finding exciting and making you excited about the future of SEA and the energy sector?
I’m working on a C40-funded programme with South Africa’s four largest metros to drive net zero carbon building development. This has the possibility of driving full sector transformation — daunting, but exciting. This level of ambition can only be achieved through substantial partnership.
Supporting municipal energy transition within the larger South Africa-Germany Energy programme, is another area of work. As we shift from the old paradigm of top-down utilities to more a distributed power sector there is an enormous amount of system change that has to happen: new ways of understanding costing and related tariffs, new business streams to be introduced as old ones die, etc. An example of our support is building capacity of municipalities across the country to enable grid feed-in from small and medium scale renewable energy (solar PV predominantly) and developing a tool to support the costing of electricity supply distribution. Sometimes the public are impatient and unaware of how hard these changes are to effect, whilst also holding and maintaining the interests of all sectors of society (as local government must do).
Please share the best and worst part about being in this sector?
Energy is relevant and import from the household to the economy and it is undergoing a rapid technology disruption, which makes the space extremely dynamic. Because it is a big part of the economy, there are also people pushing to maximize their personal interests, which puts the environment and society at risk. It is also very technical — and it’s sometimes hard to keep up!
For those who do not know SEA, the company has for the past few years has over 80% female employees. How did the organisation achieve this? Was it intentional or was it a coincidence?
I think it was not an explicit intention, but the underlying values of the organization enabled this: inclusive and reflective. Two early pioneer leaders were women, and this demonstrates how having women in place helps to draw in further women.
Looking into the future, what do you still hope to achieve and what changes do you expect to see happen in sector?
It would be exciting to see national government work in real partnership with local government — based in experimentation and local leadership. South Africa does reasonably well in this compared to many countries, but we could do better still. Similarly, it would be great to see far higher levels of trust and partnership between the private sector and government. As we move into deeper economic recession, the public sector is going to be under enormous pressure to maintain service levels and this will require substantial cooperation between all members of society. I hope we can contribute to this and thus to a more equal and sustainable society. With trust and collaboration, you can also have a lot more fun!
In the years that I have known you, I have picked up that mentoring young people and providing them with capacity building is important to you. Why is this significant to you?
When I started working there was a feisty, older woman whose commitment and fearlessness I learnt so much from. Maybe I’m ‘paying it forward’! We need the fresh ideas of younger people, but these are far stronger when based in solid understanding.
Lastly, before you go. What advice do you have for young women who have just started in the sector or are interested in joining the sector?
Professionally I have found that women are well respected in the sector (I must commend specifically the AMEU who promote women within the highly male dominated electricity sector), but I have occasionally been confronted by an attitude that can ‘pull the carpet from under you’ — and you fall in a terrible trap of self-doubt. My advice is to know your stuff — do whatever extra work that takes; and do the ongoing, inner work required to dismantle the internalized self-doubt that is part of growing up in a patriarchal society.
The Meet the Women in Energy Series features women in the energy sector who are committed to transforming the energy space. This series seeks to inspire other women and to showcase the many talented women working in the sector ranging from entrepreneurs, experts, senior executives, middle managers to young professionals’ and new graduates.
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