The Energy Watch Group (EWG) is an independent, non-profit, non-partisan global network of scientists and parliamentarians. The EWG was established in 2006 by an international group of parliamentarians under the direction of the then-member of the German Parliament Hans-Josef Fell against the background that: Energy policy needs objective information to avoid both the public and private sector misinvestments worth billions, but this endeavour is undermined by the fact that: - Policies are often influenced by inter-national organizations and governments that are, in myriad ways, interconnected with the conventional energy economy - Stakeholders in the conventional energy economy profit from the status-quo and are therefore in most cases not neutral towards all energy sources - Science is often used as a tool, which serves these vested interests. The science that receives the greatest political attention systematically under-estimates the growth potential of renewable energy and its opportunities for mankind while it overestimates the availability of cheap energy from conventional sources