  This article identifies the conformal energy (or mean distortion) of extremal
mappings of finite distortion with a given quasisymmetric mapping of the circle
as boundary data. The conformal energy of $g_o:\IS\to\IS$ is
\begin{equation}\label{energy} \mathcal
E(g_o)=-\frac{1}{4\pi^2}\iint_{\mathbb{S}\times \mathbb{S}}\log
|g_o(\zeta)-g_o(\eta)| \: d\zeta d\bar{\eta} < \infty \end{equation}
  We give explicit formulae for the conformal energy of circle homeomorphisms
directly in terms of their data. As an example, if $g_o: \mathbb{S} \rightarrow
\mathbb{S}$ is an $\eta$-quasi-M\"obius self homeomorphism of the unit circle,
then \begin{align*} \mathcal E(g_o) \leq \frac{1}{\pi} \int^{\pi/2}_0 \log \eta
\big[ \cot^2(t/2)\big] \,\cos(t) \; dt \end{align*} This estimate is sharp.
Additionally we show how a circle homeomorphism of finite conformal energy can
be uniformly approximated on $\IS$ by mappings of strictly smaller energy.
