Assessments of energy prices, market shares of the different energy carriers, market structures in a European electricity market, etc. are of vital importance to entrepreneurial and political planning in the energy industry. The latter is reflected by energy reports for Germany issued at irregular intervals on behalf of the Federal Ministry of Economics and Labour. While the development of the (inter-)national energy market is ex-post documented in multitude, an apparent lack is prevalent as regards continuous prognosis of short- and mid-term developments based on expert surveys (which, in contrast, is met in the area, e.g., of business cycle prognostication by the ZEW Indicator of Economic Sentiment or the ifo Business Climate Index and pertaining to financial market developments by the ZEW Financial Market Survey). Short- and mid-term prognoses of energy prices, structural developments, etc. are to date realised primarily by companies in the oil industry and made available within the organisations only, not to the public. Furthermore, such prognoses are based on econometric models, not on expert surveys that tap into industry-wide professional experience. The EREEMs research focus Energy aims to meet this shortcoming by establishing the ZEW Energy Market Barometer and thus through reports on the energy sector - make the experts valuable assessments available to the public.