Katie White: If we are rewiring the country, we should widen the opportunity at the same time

It's a huge pleasure to be here, and really lovely to be surrounded by so many brilliant women. I'm going to say a few words tonight, but if there's one thing I'd love you to take away, it's this: we are creating whole new industries, so we should be ambitious not only about what they deliver, but about who gets to lead them.

One of my biggest priorities as Climate Minister is electrifying our economy. Getting more of our cars, heating, businesses and industry running on clean electricity, and making sure the grids and infrastructure are there to support it.

And there's a real link between that mission and tonight. Because electrification is not just about changing the technology we use. It means rebuilding huge parts of how our economy works, creating new industries, new supply chains, new jobs and entirely new routes into work.

And when you are building something new, you get a chance to decide what kind of future you want to build with it. Who gets through the door. Who gets backed. Who gets promoted. Who gets to start the company. Who gets to lead. 

We should not spend all this time building the economy of the future, only to fill it with the same old barriers. If we are rewiring the country, we should widen the opportunity at the same time.

I see this every week. I'm out visiting sites, meeting CEOs, engineers, investors, people in our armed forces, people building the infrastructure we are going to rely on for decades. And again and again, I meet brilliant women who have seen a problem, seen a barrier, and basically thought: right, let's sort it. 

Look at some of the women these awards have recognised before.

Diane Gilpin looked at one of the hardest sectors to decarbonise, shipping, and thought there had to be a better way. The barrier was obvious: huge ships, huge fuel use, incredibly hard to clean up. So she cracked on, founded Smart Green Shipping, and started developing modern wind technology for commercial vessels. Now that idea is out there being tested in the real world.

Melanie Shufflebotham saw a different barrier. Electric cars were coming, but drivers still had a really basic problem: where on earth do I charge one? So she and her team started mapping chargepoints and building a service around that need. That became Zapmap. A simple problem, a practical solution, and now a successful business helping make electric driving easier.

And Afshan Rasheed saw another kind of barrier. It is no good creating brilliant new careers if people cannot see a route into them, or back into them. So she got on with mentoring apprentices and supporting women returning to work. Again, really practical. See the gap, help people across it.

I think there is something quite powerful in all of those stories. None of them waited for the perfect conditions. They saw what was missing, they got on with fixing it, and that is how change actually happens.

And when we talk about hundreds of thousands of clean energy jobs, I want us to think about how we get more brilliant people into them. How do we reach the woman who would never think to apply? How do we make the engineer, entrepreneur or future CEO see a place for herself in this industry before she has even considered it? 

Because often the barrier is not talent. It is confidence, visibility, networks, or simply never having seen someone like you doing the job before. That is where people in this room can make such a difference.

That is why awards like this matter. They make leadership visible. Every woman we celebrate tonight makes it a little easier for someone else to look at clean energy, engineering or business and think: that could be me.

So please keep going. Keep spotting the problem, keep knocking down the barrier, keep building the solution, and keep bringing other women with you. Because if we are going to rewire the country, we have the chance to widen opportunity at the same time.

Katie White is MP for Leeds North West and is Climate Minister at the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero.

She was named Politician of the Year at the Women in Green Business Awards 2026.