Women in Business | Ruth Herbert
Ruth Herbert (1998 MPhys Physics) is the current CEO of the Carbon Capture and Storage Association (CCSA). She represents over 120 companies active to governments, key stakeholders and the public, overseeing the CCSA’s London and Brussels offices. Ruth joined the CCSA in 2021 following a public sector career spanning two decades. As Director of Strategy at the Low Carbon Contracts Company (LCCC), Ruth implemented two key features of today’s electricity market — the CfD and Capacity Market — establishing LCCC as a trusted advisor to government on decarbonisation. At the Department of Energy and Climate Change, Ruth headed the Electricity Market Reform Programme Office, pre-White Paper through to the Energy Act 2013, negotiated the EU Directive on CO2 storage and delivered the 2009 Ministerial Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum, as well as taking part in the first cohort of the Future Leaders Scheme. Prior to this, Ruth was a Civil Service Fast Streamer, including as an economic adviser at HM Treasury and City of London Corporation.
What was Keble like when you were here?
I just remember the ceiling of the Hall being black and creepy, with large cobwebs that used to hang down for metres. Occasionally a string of cobwebs would break off and fall into someone's dinner! It's not surprising Keble was the first choice for Harry Potter... and it's amazing how the clean-up has transformed the Hall to what it is today.
Could you give us an overview of your career to date?
Because I didn't know what I wanted to do, I applied to join the civil service fast stream. It gave me the opportunity to gain lots of experience in a short space of time, as diverse as space policy, negotiating an EU trade Directive, and working in the Treasury and City of London on financial services policy. Ultimately, I was able to pursue my goal of working on climate and energy policy. After almost two decades in the public sector, in 2021, I took up my current position at the CCSA, a trade association, taking the opportunity to view things from a different vantage point.
Can you tell us about some of your career highlights?
I spent ten years working on electricity market reform, including setting up a new public body to deliver it. I still feel proud of the amazing achievement I was part of — enabling investment in renewables that would take the UK from around 5% renewable generation to almost 40% renewable generation in a single decade. I feel I learnt a lot seeing a policy all the way through from conception to implementation and subsequent optimisation. The seven years I spent as strategy and development director in that delivery body (LCCC) was also a pretty unique experience from an organisational development perspective, helping to steer it from a nine-person to a 90-person team that in a relatively short space of time became viewed as a trusted advisor to HMG.
Has being a female in a male-dominated sector presented any particular challenges to you?
I've learned to get on with it, as it's always been like that for me, as one of what felt like around 10 out of 200 physicists in the 1998 intake (I would be interested to know how those stats have changed!). The energy sector is still grappling with this imbalance which gets worse the higher up you get. I certainly found it hard to 'climb the ladder' when my children were younger and this sadly still leads to a drop off of female talent, even with reforms like shared parental leave. In my current role as CEO of the CCSA, I represent 120 companies active across the carbon capture, usage and storage value chain, in capture, transport, utilisation and storage of CO2. Very often I'm the only woman in the photo. I'm actively working to change this through encouraging more women to apply for senior roles in the sector, including on the CCSA board, and I'm pleased to say our events are some of the most diverse in the industry!
What are your plans for the future?
I am still on the journey of learning about how we can make change happen at the rate required to slow down climate change. Humans need to deliver a huge transformation in a very short space of time, which requires a level of coordination we have not seen before. I'm not sure what's next for me, but I know I want to be at the vanguard of that, working as hard as I can for my children's future.
What advice would you have for Keble’s students today?
Enjoy Keble: it's such a wonderful place to discover who you really are and learn how to think (I'll probably get into trouble if I say that's more important than the grades!). Don't worry if you don't know what you want to do with your life...it doesn't mean you're not purposeful. Finally, at the risk of sounding corny, there really is no such thing as bad experience — the twistier the road, the more you will learn along the way.
