“On behalf of everyone at the World Energy Council, thank you for your contributions and generosity of time in leading our official Congress theme launch and ‘Road to Congress 2022’ global plenary session at World Energy Week LIVE”, said Angela Wilkinson, Secretary General and CEO of the World Energy Council in a letter to Sergey Brilev, President of the Global Energy Association.

“We are receiving overwhelming and positive feedback on our first-ever fully digital World Energy Week. The digital ‘live’ experience demonstrates that we can pull the world energy community together in quality exchange and to forge new connections and collaborative solutions, even in these challenging times! Over 3,000 registered participants and more than 70 speakers engaged actively in 20 regionally focused and thematic sessions.

For me, World Energy Week LIVE resonated and further amplified the Council’s vision to humanise energy. There was widespread recognition that we must bring in the voice of the consumer into energy and work on ‘how to’ better understand the demand-side of the equation. We heard a lot of new voices, particularly about the energy needs of billions of people who still lack adequate access to modern energy and about the opportunities in engaging customers and communities, alongside companies and countries in managing the complex process of large-scale energy transition. We discussed how the crisis situation is reframing the connected challenges agenda faced by connected energy societies – the imperative to join-the-dots between more energy and less carbon in a new context of affordability and social justice. All of which are fundamental considerations as we lead on how to humanise energy and increase our ‘how to’ drive impact through demand-driven solutions.

Post-pandemic future discussions brought forward the contrasts of country and regional approaches and reminded us of our vital role of the Council as truly independent and impartial in engaging regional diversity as a strength in progressing global energy transition. I was pleased to hear themes of increasing ambition and wider cooperation running through all the sessions. I got a real sense of that there are many opportunities to accelerate clean, affordable and reliable energy developments if, and only if, we maintain our principle of being technology agnostic in the drive to climate neutrality and leverage improvements in all energy technologies, as well as adopting a broader approach to scalable and collaborative innovation. And, of course, it was with great excitement that we launched the official theme for the St Petersburg World Energy Congress 2022 as Energy for Humanity.

It was a pleasure to share the digital global stage with you. I look forward to staying in touch as we build towards next year’s World Energy Week and the 25th World Energy Congress. On a practical note, we are enabling open access to all session recordings via our website. We will be in touch again soon the share the links for on-demand viewing once these are available.

Once again, thank you for your support in making this a successful and memorable World Energy Week LIVE. I look forward to further opportunities for conversation and collaboration as we humanise energy and inspire and secure benefits of better energy for all of humanity.”