The energy sector, which has traditionally been an oligarchic closed one, is undergoing major changes at all levels: more and more players are authorised to produce, deal and transport energy, and energy consumers are now in the position to also produce and trade energy. This new trend can be supported by Service-Oriented Architectures (SOAs) at all levels.

EnS indicates challenges for SOA to be addressed for a successful unbundling of the energy arena, thus providing a more efficient infrastructure with both environmental and economic benefits. The Netherlands and China can be at the forefront of the change due their privileged position with respect to knowledge of theory and practice of Service- Oriented Computing, on the one hand, and to their involvement in energy production and consumption, on the other hand.

The goal of the dialogue meeting is to set up a common research agenda in the field of ICT for Energy for the next 3/5 years in order to take advantage of such privileged position, thus providing service infrastructures for the energy sector and giving new energy to the field of service science, from which the title of the proposal: Energising Services. The dialoguers represent the top Dutch universities involved in Service-Oriented Computing research and the top Chinese universities located in Beijing.

The benefit for starting the EnS thematic dialogue is mutual from both the Dutch and the Chinese side. The EnS dialogue will focus on understanding the needs and requirements from the Chinese point of view (which has rapidly become the world largest energy market) and match the needs with available techniques that have been proposed and developed in the Netherlands over the last decade (being the Netherlands one of the most active nations in the research on services and also at the forefront of its application in the governmental domain).