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utILIty WeeK | 28th February - 6th March 2014 | 9 Interview I t was Star Trek that inspired Nina Skorupska's lifelong fascination with science, she admits with a laugh. Her mother, a Polish immigrant, is credited with instilling the value of education and self-reliance. Fast forward 25 years and Skorupska is chief executive of the Renewable Energy Association. With the freshly inked Energy Act bringing in a new subsidy regime amid a political backlash against rising energy prices, it is not the easiest time to fight renewables' corner. Despite all the challenges, six months into the job Skorupska brims with enthusiasm about the prospects for renewable energy. In an interview that ranges from flooding to fossil fuel tax breaks, bickering MPs to reti- cent ministers, energy bills to biomass, she remains determinedly upbeat. In her career, she has boldly gone where few women have been before. She set her sights on the job of power station manager when she was some four pay grades away. Once her boss stopped laughing, he helped her get the necessary training. "It was tough, but it was great fun, I loved it." She became the first woman to run one of RWE's UK power stations, at Didcot B. And she is keen to get more women into energy, join- ing the board of the Women in Science and Engineering campaign in February. During a quarter of a century in the industry, Skorup- ska covered most forms of power generation and trad- ing before making the jump to renewables lobbying. She stresses that the REA is not "anti" anything, seeing energy efficiency, gas and nuclear – not to mention car- bon capture and storage, eventually – as part of the solu- tion to climate change. "It is not an either/or. The problem is so huge, it is a big, big 'and'." Recent flooding has pushed climate change back up the political agenda, with Julia Slingo, chief executive of the Met Office, saying "all the evidence suggests" a link. "There is something about it happening in your back- yard that finally hits home to people," says Skorupska, although she is careful not to appear opportunistic. "I take a stronger signal from the release of the IPCC report," she says, referring to the weighty scientific docu- ment that last year stated, with 95 per cent certainty, that human activity is the main cause of global warming since the 1950s. "I believe if you have a 95 per cent prob- ability of something materialising, you do something about it. But because it does not serve everyone's inter- ests to admit that is a reality, then they will find excuses to attack." She cites a recent flare-up between climate sceptic MP Peter Lilley and Tim Yeo, his greener Conservative colleague on the Energy and Climate Change Commit-