File:Tilos island in the Aegean Sea, Greece.jpg

English: This image, acquired on 13 March 2021 by one of the two satellites of the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission, shows the Greek island of Tilos. Until a few years ago, most of the residential electricity consumption on the small Greek island of Tilos was supplied by a submarine cable connecting it to a diesel power plant on the larger Kos island, almost 50 km northeast. In 2017, a project was launched to transform Tilos into a wildlife conservation area. It included the installation of a hybrid energy system consisting of a wind turbine, a photovoltaic power plant and two high-energy-density batteries. Today the power plant supplies 75% of the island’s energy needs in the summer, when its population reaches more than one thousand people, while it produces a surplus of energy in the winter, when population halves. The green conversion of Tilos was made possible thanks to the TILOS project, funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. The island has become the first island in Southern Europe to achieve almost complete independence from electricity generated from fossil fuels. The success of the TILOS project paved the way for similar projects that reflect the objectives of the European Green Deal, by which the EU aims to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050 through the reduction of energy consumption and a strong push towards clean energy production. Open data provided by the Copernicus Climate Change and services support the energy sector by providing historical data, seasonal forecasts and projections for climate, electricity demand and the production of power, from wind, solar and hydro, at regional and national levels throughout Europe. The Atmosphere Monitoring delivers short term forecasts on solar radiation and aerosol that help in predicting the efficiency of solar power plants and in their day-to-day operations.