I have worked on developing energy efficiency standards. Sometimes they come from international organizations and are adopted by individual countries. But sometimes individual countries develop standards and then they can go international (I gave an example of this in my 80,000 Hours podcast near the end). This has happened quite a bit with the US Energy Star program. I agree with the original poster that standards development can indeed be dull, but I think this is an important effort.
I have worked on developing energy efficiency standards. Sometimes they come from international organizations and are adopted by individual countries. But sometimes individual countries develop standards and then they can go international (I gave an example of this in my 80,000 Hours podcast near the end). This has happened quite a bit with the US Energy Star program. I agree with the original poster that standards development can indeed be dull, but I think this is an important effort.