COVID-19 Consumer Sentiment Snapshot #1: Setting the Baseline

The World Energy Council has presented the results of a review entitled ‘Shaping the future while managing a crisis: analysis from the World Energy Council’. The study reflects the key problems facing businesses in the energy sector along with the most effective strategies for solving them. Energy development scenarios and mechanisms to adapt to unstable economic conditions — all of these issues will form part of the business programme at the World Energy Congress in St. Petersburg in 2022. The event is organized by the World Energy Council, the Russian National Committee of the World Energy Council and the Roscongress Foundation.

The article by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) discusses possible political, economic, and social impacts of the coronavirus pandemic and the lessons to be learnt by the world, and the EU in particular, from this crisis.

The events of the past 18 months have completely reshaped the world. In an instant, the spread of a terrible disease has cast light on the true state of healthcare systems around the world. It has also been a stress test on countries’ financial systems. Russia has weathered the storm and has endured minimal damage in comparison to the biggest global economies.

In 2011 Eric Schmidt — one of the most renowned figures in the IT industry and at the time Executive Chairman of Google — spoke at the session «The World According to Google» at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. What he said turned out to be remarkably prophetic, particularly when viewed from the context of the current COVID-19 pandemic and our experience of self-isolation.