January 20, 2010—The Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy’s (EERE) Virtual Information Bridge to Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy (VIBE) is expanding its reach to attract new users across the widest range of energy issues. A sister site to VIBE, called Open Energy Information (OpenEI), has been launched to allow organizations around the world to both post their own energy data and download data, for free.
Through VIBE and OpenEI, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) is putting its information and data at the public’s fingertips, to use, to download, to build on, and to spur new analysis. The goal is to make the most relevant knowledge about energy issues available to anyone at any time, so that decision-makers in both the public and private sectors can help the nation achieve its clean energy goals and help transform energy markets, policy decisions and technology investments.
In December, OpenEI was selected by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to fulfill the Obama Administration’s commitment to open up the workings of the federal government through the Internet. DOE hailed OpenEI as a way to make energy information “transparent, participatory and collaborative.” It was also used by the teams representing the United States at international climate negotiations in Copenhagen and the Major Economies Forum (MEF).
