BAKU, Azerbaijan, June 8. Current global crises may be turning point in energy policy making, Executive Director of the International Energy Agency (IEA) Fatih Birol said at IEA’s 7th Annual Global Conference on Energy Efficiency, Trend reports.
“We’re having the energy crisis and, in my view, this is the first global energy crisis the world is facing. We’re in the middle of the first global energy crisis. Yes, we had energy crisis in 1970s, but it was exclusively oil crisis. But now we have oil, gas, coal, electricity crises all coming together. Despite the challenges we’re facing, I believe these crises may well be a turning point in energy policy making for the next years to come,” he said.
Birol recalled that in the 1970s, when the world had high oil prices, inflation like today, economic recession that the world may be entering very soon, but at the same time, that was a big change in the government policy making.
“And one of the changes was energy efficiency. In 1970s an average car in the world needed about 18 liters to drive 100 kilometers. As a response to the high oil prices and the crisis we were facing, governments took measures, fuel standards, auto industries, car manufacturers moved and in less than a decade instead of 18 liters an average car in the world needed less than 10 liters to drive 100 kilometers. That was a huge change and many governments from Europe, Asia and the Americas participated in this. I expect that we can do it again and this crisis may be another reason for a change.”
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