As I boarded the train heading down from the snowy mountain world of Davos, Switzerland, to get to Zurich airport, I was surprised to find myself sharing a table with three South Africans. One turned out to be Katlego – a graduate from some years ago from our Masters programme Sustainable Development and, as I recall, her undergraduate was a Bachelor of Science with some very good marks. She always did well dealing with quantitative information. Upon further inquiry, I discover all three work for the South African Weather Service, and they have just spent three weeks in Davos at some sort of global ‘calibration’ agency with other countries. The purpose, she said, was to “bring our instruments so that we can all calibrate them absolutely precisely. ….. We’ve spent three weeks taking measurements!” she exclaims, rolling her eyes, reinforced with an impish smile. I gather this was all about making sure that everyone’s instruments are perfectly aligned so that measurements are totally comparable – “so that we all know we are measuring the same thing”, she explains (losing me in some of the technical jargon). I gradually gather that the instruments they are talking about are to measure radiation levels all over the globe, as well as in South Africa. She explains that the SA Weather Service has now built radiation measurement stations around the country to accurate measure radiation levels. And why is this important? I ask. Well, she says, we need to know where the best places are to build solar power plants. Radiation levels of different in different places, and the better they are, the more power the solar power plant will generate. But it is not as simple as that, she explains – it is also about taking into account temperate (because if panels get too hot their performance goes down) and the effect of radiation on the materials used in the solar power plants (such as polymers that degrade with radiation). I was blown away – while us smart analysts in the International Resource Panel were deliberating on the dynamics of the transition to a global economy based on renewable energy, here were young smart black scientists honing their skills nearby to precisely calibrate their instruments to create the databases that the solar power plant operators will need to plan the best possible locations for their installations! Just so amazing how big doors swing on such small hinges. And how the world changes incrementally, as crises translate into paradigm shifts, and then into financial flows and technology innovations, and how much it all depends so much on ordinary young scientists like these who have to spend three weeks in a Swiss Alpine laboratory to carefully and perfectly calibrate their instruments in ways, I guess, only the Swiss can do. What an incredible world we live in. And how inspiring that Katlego found a way to marry her scientific background with her Masters in Sustainable Development to find a job at the SA Weather Service putting in place the databases we will need to transition to renewable energy!