Throughout the economic crisis, governments have acted with decisiveness and imagination. In shoring up the financial system, policy-makers have acted across borders and against the clock. For the most part, shared interests have trumped more narrow national concerns.

The energy challenge, no less global in scope, requires an equally urgent commitment to international co-ordination. And that must include an open and healthy dialogue between consumer and producer countries. The global energy challenge is two-fold. First is the need to find enough affordable energy to promote economic growth and reduce poverty around the world. And second is the requirement to stabilize and reduce the emission of greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming.

All countries will need more energy at a sharply reduced cost to the environment.

With every passing year, the task becomes more pressing. By 2050, the world will consume twice the energy it does today, as populations and living standards continue to grow. Yet easily accessible supplies of oil and gas are dwindling. The world needs to develop additional energy sources, including unconventional oil and gas, alternative energy and nuclear power – all of which will require much time and money to deploy. And even then supply will still struggle to meet demand.

The recession has only made the challenge tougher. Weaker profits and tightened credit conditions have slowed investment in the energy industry. And volatility has intensified: over the past year or so, the price of oil has fallen from a high of $147 per barrel to below $40, before recovering to between $60 and $70. Volatility feeds uncertainty over the future price of energy, also discouraging investment.

International co-operation will be critical to building a sustainable energy future. Neither consumers nor producers can meet the energy challenge in isolation. Working together, they must produce tangible results. Dialogue must not be an end in itself.

Paramount is the need for more timely information on energy supply and demand. A reliance on out-of-date market information drove last year’s spike in prices. We now know that demand had already begun to decline in the fourth quarter of 2007. Yet in early 2008 analysts still expected global oil demand to continue rising, sending the oil price to its record high the following July. Only concrete progress on the Joint Oil Data Initiative will produce a more accurate picture of market conditions.

Producer and consumer countries can also help to smooth the path of a viable climate change policy framework. In particular, the world needs a hard price for carbon dioxide to stimulate investment in the low-carbon economy. And that will require international acceptance for a global cap and trade scheme.

The world also needs cleaner fossil fuels that build a bridge to a distant future when renewable energy can supply a significant portion of global energy. Together, producers and consumers must support rapid advances in carbon capture and storage technology. And strive to reduce the CO2 intensity of liquid fuels on a well-to-wheel basis.

In all these areas, dialogue must produce material results. That in turn pushes the International Energy Forum to centre-stage in the global energy challenge. The Forum is the only organisation open to both producers and consumers, and its membership includes countries beyond OPEC and the International Energy Agency. It is in the midst of a major programme of work in support of a productive dialogue.