In March 2007, the European Council set a series of challenging and aspirational climate and energy targets for the EU to meet by 2020, known as the “20-20-20” targets:

• Ensure 20% of EU energy consumption comes from renewable resources;
  Improve energy efficiency by 20%;
• Achieve a reduction in EU greenhouse gas emissions by 20%, compared to 1990 levels.
• In March 2009, binding legislation was adopted through a climate and energy package, to implement the 20-20-20 targets. This legislative package establishes specific policies to reach these goals and distributes them to the members’ states (which may adopt more restrictive emission regulations if they wish).

To reach these targets, regions and local authorities play an important role, especially as the EU is encouraging regions to develop and implement climate change mitigation strategies, such as Covenant of Mayors initiative.

Furthermore, current national data for GHG emissions is not of the sufficiency and accuracy to help European regions define and monitor local strategies; and there are already many local monitoring systems in place dealing with environmental issues (such as energy and GHG emissions, air quality, climate change, etc).

For these reasons we decided to create the European Network ENERGee-Watch, with the aim of standardising data at a European Level, enabling comparisons across European territories to be made and for European-wide methodologies to be established. Membership is free of charge.