DAVE TURK Certainly, a lot of different lessons that can be drawn out of this, as we talked about at the outset of this conversation, this unprecedented situation. I would maybe narrow down to three key lessons, at least I’m taking from it. One, and we’ve talked about this some, is really having decision makers, government decision makers, private sector decision makers, NGO decision makers, think outside the box. I think the longer we’re in our own respective jobs, there can sometimes be a sense of this is how it always works, this is how it always will work, and the possibility of big change is discounted or is just thought of as completely unlikely.
And I think that this kind of situation, hopefully, causes all of us to step back and think creatively, to think about big change, both big change that can happen in a positive sense, and certainly, to meet our energy transition goals, our CO2 reduction goals, we do need big structural change. The kind of change that won’t just happen automatically, but government leadership, private sector leadership will absolutely be necessary.
So, I’m hopefully, as a lesson learnt, we can think outside the box, we can get out of our day-to-day email inbox and really look at the different opportunities that are out there. And as you said, Mathias, one of those is the human behavioural aspect and how sticky some of that might be. So, that’s one key lesson learnt, at least I’m taking away. Another key one is the importance of real-time information and real-time data. And, as I said at the outset, with our Global Energy Review, really trying to push our analysts and experts to the maximum to provide and to work with their data sources to really provide a sense of what’s actually happening out in the real world.
If you want to make sound decisions, you’ve got to know what’s actually happening out there. What kind of electricity reductions are we seeing in different types of lockdown? What is happening in aviation? What is happening in road transport? What’s happening in all sorts of parts of the energy spectrum? So, I’m taking big lesson learnt as let’s try to have that real-time information and obviously, if you need to make estimates or do other kinds of ways to do that, that can help. But sometimes, timely good, solid information is much better than perfect information that’s two years old or three years old in terms of real world decision making out there.
And then the third thing, and I think we’re seeing this already, and hopefully, we can see this even more over the coming months, we’ve got a big clean energy transition summit that we’re hosting on the 9th July that’ll be in virtual form with key decision makers in the energy space from around the world, trying to learn from each other. Different companies are going through similar challenges, different challenges, we all have different circumstances.
But what we hope to do, certainly at the IEA, and I think this is a lesson learnt, we’re seeing this certainly in the health crisis, if country X is doing better in a health crisis what lessons learnt can we have there from a testing regime or from how they’re responding to the situation? Similarly, on the energy side and certainly on the energy transition side, I think there’s a lot of lessons learnt in real-time that can be gleaned, shared, tailored for different government contexts. We’ve spent an awful lot of time doing that at the IEA, and to me, that’s certainly a key lesson learnt from this whole terrible crisis in front of us.