While EU Heads of State and Government debated in Brussels about the future of EU energy policy and the ways to ensure safe, secure, sustainable and affordable energy for Europe, the Open Knowledge Foundation presented its project Europe's Energy. Thanks to this portal citizens will have access to a set of visual tools to put these targets into context and to understand and compare how progress is being made towards them in different countries.

The Europe's Energy project is mainly based on data from Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union, as well as the International Energy Agency. By a colour coding Europe's Energy portal shows statistical data from member states in aspects such as CO2 emission per capita, renewable energy share as well as member states energy net imports, an the evolution of member states achievements regarding the renewable targets set for 2020.

These indicators show how member states evolve in the targets agreed by them in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by cutting energy consumption by 20% and increasing the share of renewables in the energy mix to 20% by 2020.

Europe's Energy website is a mini-project of the Open Knowledge Foundation, supported by the European funded LOD2 project, which is bringing together open datasets from local, regional and national public bodies across Europe for all to reuse. The project is based on ideas that came out of the Eurostat Hackday event in London in December 2010, and has been put together in just under two weeks by Gregor Aisch, Jonathan Gray, Dirk Heine, Friedrich Lindenberg, Nathaniel Scheer, and Guo Xu, who also counted with the collaboration of many other people and institutions for its launch.

Energy open data at a Council focused on energy and innovation

Europe's Energy portal has been presented at the celebration of the European Council held in Brussels on 4 February, which was highly focused on energy and innovation matters. At this meeting, Heads of State and Government underlined the EU's commitment to EU's ambitious energy and climate change objectives through a number of operational conclusions.

The Council agreed that the European Union needs a fully functioning, interconnected and integrated internal energy market, and for that purpose legislation on the internal energy market must be speedily and fully implemented by Member States in full respect of the agreed deadlines. Towards this objective Council and European Parliament are invited to work towards the early adoption of the Commission's proposal for a Regulation on energy markets integrity and transparency.

It is also necessary to achieve better interconnected energy infrastructures, and to modernise and expand Europe's energy infrastructure. This is crucial to ensure that solidarity between Member States will become operational, that alternative supply/transit routes and sources of energy will materialise and that renewables will develop and compete with traditional sources.

Council also concluded that investments in energy efficiency enhance competitiveness and support security of energy supply and sustainability at low cost. The 2020 20% energy efficiency target as agreed by the June 2010 European Council, which is presently not on track, must be delivered. This requires determined action to tap the considerable potential for higher energy savings of buildings, transport and products and processes.