N E W S - I N D U S T R Y M A T T E R S
12 February 2020
Young women encouraged to engineer a career
Being a young woman in a maledominated
field hasn’t stopped Bella
Franks carving out a successful
international career as an engineer.
Recently she spoke about her
experiences to a group of female
students keen to follow in her footsteps.
Bella was one of four guest speakers at
the Women in Engineering Canterbury
(WiE Can) event hosted by the University
of Canterbury (UC).
WiE Can gives 60 female Year 13
students from high schools across New
Zealand the opportunity to find out more
about engineering by attending a series
of hands-on workshops over five days,
culminating in today’s session hearing
from high-profile female engineers.
Bella, who graduated from UC in 2010
with a Bachelor of Civil Engineering with
Honours and is now working for Aecom
as Associate Director of Buildings and
Places, says engineering offers a varied
and exciting career path.
“They’ve been
insuring New
Zealand families
like mine for
nearly 100 years.”
MAS is 100% New Zealand owned and we’ve been
serving our Members, like Katherine, for nearly
100 years now. Not only have we established a
foundation to fund health initiatives, we have been
awarded Consumer NZ People’s Choice across four
categories* for three years running.
Keep good company with MAS
mas.co.nz
0800 800 627
Katherine Reinhold (and Rosa)
Lawyer and MAS Member * House, contents, car and life insurance
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Affordable energy
storage lacking
BusinessNZ Energy Council
executive director Tina Schirr
welcomes the release of the
World Energy Council’s (WEC)
Innovation Insights Brief - Five
Steps to Energy Storage.
The brief suggests mainstream
storage technologies are likely
insufficient to meet future
flexibility requirements and
further decentralisation and
decarbonisation efforts.
A narrow focus on lithium-ion
batteries is putting the
development of more cost-effective
alternative technologies
at risk, following feedback from
energy leaders from 17 countries.
"With major decarbonising
efforts to remove thermal electric
power generation and scale up
renewable energies, the adoption
of energy storage is a key focus
the world and for New Zealand,"
Ms Schirr says.
"However, the brief shows
affordable storage systems are
a crucial missing link between
intermittent renewable power and
24/7 reliability net-zero carbon
scenario."
Ms Schirr says while there is
visionary thinking in terms of
energy storage, recent progress
has focused on short-duration
and battery-based energy
storage for efficiency gains and
ancillary services. Meanwhile,
there has been limited progress in
developing daily, weekly and even
seasonal cost-effective solutions.