A consortium of international energy, industry and science leaders has launched the Enershare project, funded with 8 million euros from the European Commission. Announced in Lisbon on November 9, the initiative aims to create a consumer-centric participatory information system through the development of the first “common European energy data space.”
Interoperability, trust, and value of data are three of the innovative layers to digitize the sector, providing a range of integrated services from merging information from energy and non-energy value chains.
Digitizing the energy sector by joining forces
The Enershare project, led by key digital transformation actor ENGINEERING, includes thirty-one consortium partners from Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Slovenia, and Spain. They are international energy sector organizations, industries, research institutes and academia, as well as providers of digital transformation services in open standards and analytics. They include names such as Engie, Asm Terni Spa, Nokia, The Latvian Environmental Investment Fund and FIWARE Foundation.
“It becomes urgent to push forward the development of a common European Energy Data Space. One of the key actions presented in the European Commission's recommendation for Energy System Integration is the simplification and implementation of an action plan for the digitization of energy that can accelerate the implementation of digital solutions along a more integrated energy system, taking advantage of continuous and interoperable data-driven interaction between actors in the energy sector and beyond,” commented Massimo Bertoncini, Project Coordinator at Enershare and R&D Program Director for Digital Energy at ENGINEERING.
The goals of the Enershare project
The project's mission is clear and starts from a growing need: sharing data. “Such huge demand for information requires new concepts, architectures, solutions, governance and business models suited to the energy domain on how to share, trust and exchange data efficiently between and among energy and non-energy stakeholders,” Bertoncini continues.
Over the next three years, the consortium will develop and deliver a reference implementation for a common energy data space that will leverage the state-of-the-art architectures of the FIWARE Foundation, the International Data Space Association (IDSA) and the European cloud initiative GAIA-X. It will enable a level playing field for data sharing and exchange, creating a single market across sectors in an efficient and secure manner within the EU. In doing so, public and private entities will be able to comprehensively and reliably control the use of the data they generate.
Image: Joshua Sortino (Unsplash)