We meet Energy Networks Australia’s new CEO Dominique van den Berg, whose 20-plus-year career in the energy sector has taken her from the UK to Kazakhstan and Singapore, and now Australia. In what has traditionally been a male-dominated industry, van den Berg continues to be a champion of change, particularly in the areas of gender equality and LGBTQIA+ visibility.
Like every South African ex-pat I’ve ever met, Dominique van den Berg—or Dom, as she likes to be called—has an easiness about her that makes her instantly likeable. While the title ‘CEO’ carries a certain pretence to it, it’s clear from the first 30 seconds of our conversation that Dom’s not about that.
She explains she fell into energy when she moved to the UK in her early 20s and started working with BG Group. After a while, she was offered the opportunity to work internationally for the company, and heard there was a role going for a business planning manager in Kazakhstan.
“Nobody wanted to move to Kazakhstan,” Dom says.
Related article: Dominique van den Berg joins ENA as CEO
“I asked my partner, Michele, what she thought about going. And she was like, ‘Yeah OK, but I have to work there. I’m not going to be a trailing spouse.’ So, I accepted the role to lead the economics and strategy team, and Michele, who had done her psychology degree, took a role as a wellness advisor.
“We spent two-and-a-half years there and loved it. It was a great opportunity to progress both of our careers at the same time.
“Being in Kazakhstan was great exposure. There were very few people who were keen to go and it was unfair because it’s fantastic. We lived in the middle of the Steppe. It was so flat, you could actually see the Earth’s curvature, and it swung between -40°C and 40°C in the span of a week. It was a beautiful but bizarre place to actually live and, well, just survive.
“Initially, what drew me to a career in the energy sector was the sense of adventure and being able to travel, but I stayed because of the fact that energy shaped geopolitics. Kazahkstan is case in point—it’s right in the epicentre between Russia, China and the West.”
The couple returned to the UK where Dom took on the role of chief of staff for the CEO of BG Group.
“He was a wonderful man and I learnt more from him in a week than I did in my whole MBA.”
“Michele and I had decided we wanted to move to Australia. He told me, ‘Well, you need to decide, do you actually want to get serious about your career? If you do, you need to go and take a position on the frontline because you can’t ask people to do something that you’re not prepared to do yourself.’”
Dom took his advice and accepted the role of integrated operations manager at the BG-owned QGC, where she was BG’s only expat in the field in Queensland.
“What I loved about BG Group was that it sent its emerging leaders into tricky situations and gave them all the opportunities and support to succeed,” she said.
“In Queensland, for example, we were sometimes the first people to have to tell local farmers they didn’t actually own the land six feet underneath their property… and then we had to figure out a way to coexist.
It shows that social licence and getting it right, learning from mistakes and properly engaging with communities has always been at the core of energy progress.
“BG gave me a role probably 10 years earlier than I might have gotten elsewhere. I led upstream operations across Southeast Asia from offshore exploration all the way through to production. I was 32 at the time and leading 500 people. I definitely suffered from imposter syndrome but I learnt a lot and grew my experience ten-fold with amazing support at an executive level.
“Their operations in India and China were led by an Indian man and a Chinese man. And here I was, this woman with no significant management experience and I was a good 20 years younger than them. But they were brilliant because they recognised that while they knew their business, the story needed to be told back to a British company. And they needed people to understand what was happening but also to have the relationships and the connections back in into those places to make sure the story was told properly.
“We found a groove where we knew each other’s value and worked together, and it was pretty amazing.”
Dom and Michele now live on Boonwurrung country on the Mornington Peninsula with their two children. A mum and CEO, Dom knows how important it is for women in energy businesses to see other women in leadership roles.
“I had both of our kids and was fortunate to be able to take a year of parental leave for each child,” she says.
“Michele and I have always worked really hard to make sure one of us isn’t sacrificing too much at the expense of the other. When we had our son, Michele went to Rio Olympics as a psychologist with the Australian archery and triathlon teams. So, she was able to keep her career going while I was at home, and then we switched.
“We’ve also made conscious decisions to ensure our careers haven’t revolved around the traditional definition of success. For us, it’s very much about achieving balance and spending time together while the kids are at school.
On the subject of school, Dom recently shaved her head to support a fellow mum who was diagnosed with cancer.
“My dad died of lung cancer six years ago, and I have had a really good friend who died of breast cancer four years ago,” Dom explains.
“There’s a mum at school whose youngest is the same age as my son. She’s currently doing her second round of chemo and was telling me her daughter was struggling with her being the only mum with a shaved head at pickup.
“I shaved my head and we sent her a video. She said when her daughter saw it, her face just lit up. So, now there are two mums with a shaved head at pickup and other school events, and it just helps that little bit. There’s kind of a social ‘loudness’ to women who have super-short hair. There shouldn’t be, but there is. I guess I want to normalise it and at the same time try to raise funds for the McGrath Foundation, which has been an amazing support for their family.”
Now seven months into her tenure at Energy Networks Australia (ENA), Dom says she’s amazed by the level of talent and deep technical expertise of the small but strong team.
“There are only 17 of us, but I think we punch well above our weight,” she laughs.
“For me, it’s a joy to work with these people. I’m also constantly impressed by the amount of involvement and interest we get from our members, who really lean in to help us identify what we need to do as partners in this industry.
“The challenge for everyone right now is keeping up with this energy transition, which is just moving so quickly. ENA’s focus is making sure we are crystal clear on the things that we really want to amplify and leverage, because we need to have a voice in what is a very complex system.
“We also have a really exceptional Board of Directors. Obviously all the members have got their jurisdictions and are competitive, but they come together in a really genuine, collaborative way to support ENA and be part of this broader thinking.”
Our conversation turns to the highly anticipated Energy Networks Australia conference—EN2024—being held from 19-21 March in Adelaide.
“I am excited for my first Energy Networks conference. I really believe that 2024 and 2025 are going to define the energy transition in this country, and the decisions we make and learnings we take now will help set us on the right path for decades,” Dom says.
“The line-up at this year’s conference will not only not disappoint but also has some very exceptional women leaders to set the tone.“
Laura Sandys, a keynote speaker for the conference who is flying in from the UK, has been working in energy transformation for 20 years. She not only chairs The Green Alliance, The Food Foundation and British Standards Institute Advisory board on Net Zero but is also a key advisor to the International Energy Agency on smart grids and sits on the board of SSE Transmission, Energy Systems Catapult, Ohme Global and Highview Power. Previously, she was the Chair of the UK Government’s Energy Digitalisation Taskforce and is now working globally to spread best practise of the digitalisation of the energy system.
“We hope the conference offers our members and the entire industry insight and inspiration to see the right policies and decisions being made from the outset,” Dom explains.
As for ENA’s strategic direction under Dom’s leadership for 2024 and beyond, she says critical thinking and logic need to be at the heart of whole system transition.
“We want to see the right policies and decisions being made to match the energy transition at least cost to the consumer.
“The biggest emissions reduction comes from removing coal from the electricity supply system and replacing it with clean generation at grid scale and behind the meter, new transmission and distribution and adequate storage. This means moving at lightning speed compared to the past and must be underpinned by good planning and policy to enable investment.
“The next major opportunity for emissions reduction is in EVs. We’re starting to see this inflection point where EVs are actually at a cost point where customers are starting to invest in them. But the challenge is smart charging, where EVs become the opportunity rather than the problem from a grid perspective, which will in turn bring charging costs down for customers. We’re going to see big savings and in terms of costs as well as emissions by leveraging and using the demand flexibility side of EVs to soak up excess renewables.
Related article: Standing committee launches inquiry into EV transition
“Then we also have to look at heavy industry, which has pretty much sustained the Australian economy, and how it is going to decarbonise. Because complete electrification for industry is either impossible or really, really expensive. So, now we are looking at how hydrogen and biomethane can work in this space. But this can’t happen without policy support.
“These are the big issues we’re looking at in the transition, and certainly these are topics we’ll touch on at EN2024 in March. I think the key talking point will be how do we achieve this transition and make it equitable? I think we’ve moved past the mechanisms of how we achieve net zero and are looking towards how we can put it in place in a way that’s fair for everyone.
“That’s our end goal.”
Click here to register for EN2024 or here to contribute to Dom’s fundraiser for the McGrath Foundation.
Dom is also on the Board of the Pinnacle Foundation—Australia’s LGBTQIA+ education charity. The foundation provides educational scholarships, mentoring and opportunities for young LGBTQIA+ Australians to realise their full potential.
