As the technology pillar of the EU's energy and climate policy, SET-Plan has the objectives to accelerate technology development to achieve the 2020 Energy and Climate goals, to maintain EU industrial leadership on low-carbon energy technologies, and to contribute to the worldwide transition to a low-carbon economy by 2050. In 2007, the Strategic Energy Technologies Information System (SETIS) was established, which is an open-access information and knowledge-management system, that was set up to support the decision-making process in the SET-Plan, and to support the Steering Group in the strategic planning, monitoring and assessment of progress of the SET-Plan for meeting the EU energy policy objectives. This is achieved through the provision of regular, reliable information and data, addressing, amongst others, the energy technologies and innovation aspects of SET-Plan. .

Recently, a number of significant SET-Plan related activities have taken or are taking place, including:

• The JRC has recently produced the first edition of an annual report on the technology, and the market and economic aspects of wind energy in Europe and the world, being very relevant to the theme of the issue of this SETIS magazine. With this report, the JRC becomes an important contributor to the knowledge base for the wind energy sector, providing up-to-date information on the technology and economics with a focus on the European Union.

• The review of implementation of the SET-Plan is currently ongoing, based on a process agreed with the Steering Group. The review focuses on the terms of reference of the Steering Group, the implementation of SETIS, and the SET-Plan implementation mechanisms, i.e. the EIIs and EERA. Furthermore, the review is addressing the appropriateness of implementation mechanisms, the effectiveness of implementation, and their delivery and impact. The findings and recommendations of the review will feed into the ongoing discussions for the definition of an enhanced SET-Plan for the period 2014-2020, which will be presented at the forthcoming SET-Plan Conference.

• New EII implementation plans for the period 2013-2015 are currently being developed by each EII Team. SETIS actively participates in this process by reviewing the achievements of the first implementation plans, flagging future priorities and revisiting the KPIs where needed.

• ERA-NET+: Two FP7 calls were published as part of the Work Programme 2012 and 2013 to support EIBI demonstration projects in line with the 7 value-chains defined in the Implementation Plan. The selected BESTF ERA-NET+ from WP2012 started in January 2013 and includes 8 MS/AC (UK, DE, SE, FI, DK, ES, CH, PT) and contributes EUR 31 million of national funding in addition to the EUR 15 million of EC funding. For wind, an FP7 ERA-NET+ call (ENERGY.2013.10.1-2) was launched on 10th July 2012 for a European wind resources assessment which will include a new wind atlas, detailed wind models and measuring campaigns for validating the models. Led by Denmark, this project includes at least nine MS for an estimated budget of EUR 12 million plus an additional 30% of Commission contribution. The project will likely run for five years from 2014.

• The ongoing activity in the Education and Training Initiative of the SET-Plan is about to be completed. This work aims to identify the education and training needs for specialists involved in low-carbon energy technologies (researchers, engineers and technicians) in 2020 and 2030 in the EU.

• We would like to remind you that this year’s 2013 SET-Plan Conference will take place on 7-8 May. The Irish Presidency will host the conference at the Royal Hospital Kilmainham in Dublin. The two-day event will bring together a broad range of stakeholders including the research community, industry, financial community, policy-makers and a variety of international partners.

• SETIS has started work on an update of the 2013 Technology Map, which is a concise overview of the status and prospects of energy technologies. The report is expected to be published in the second half of the year. It will be accompanied by a second report that will provide reference values for the operational and cost performance of current and future low-carbon technologies, for use in technology and energy system assessments.

• As part of the Energy Research Knowledge Centre (ERKC), a dedicated website, which will be accessible via a portal on the SETIS website, is now in a beta-testing phase and will be fully operational soon. In the meantime, ERKC has collected data and analysed over 450 projects. From these a number of country profiles have been developed, as well as European-wide analyses comparing budget spending per country, technology investment per country, etc.

• A symposium, co-organised by the JRC, was held in February in Brussels, on "Benefits and limitations of nuclear fission for a low carbon economy". At the symposium different stakeholders voiced their opinion why European research is or is not needed in the nuclear fission domain. The outcome of the symposium will provide guidance to decision-makers on the Euratom part of Horizon 2020. A background study, an ethics opinion and the presentations can be found at

• And finally, the SETIS website has recently undergone a major restructuring of its information architecture, including a slight redesign in order to align the website better with other EC websites. The restructuring better reflects priorities and new requests, such as dedicated project pages to support the operation of individual EIIs (e.g. EIBI), a clearer structure in the library, more emphasis on the implementation activities of the EIIs and EEPR projects, as well as an easier navigation structure. Moreover, SETIS will continue to address SET-Plan activities with a steady flow of short and long news articles, event announcements and regular interviews with the principal players in the low-carbon energy community, as well acting as a repository for the latest Scientific and Technical reports on all low-carbon technologies. This new-look quarterly SETIS magazine is also a major SETIS milestone.