Lisbon, 9 November 2022 – A consortium of international leaders and market drivers from the energy industry and science has launched the Enershare project, funded with 8 million euros by the European Commission. The main objective of the project is to develop and deploy the first of its kind Common European Energy Data Space Reference Implementation and provide a stack of data-driven cross-value chain services at the interplay of energy, non-energy and Data value chains to enable a consumer-centric participatory data-driven energy system. Enershare will accelerate the digitalisation of the energy sector, through the upscale of a variety of technological building blocks, including interoperability, trust, data value and governance. The project is relevant to the European goal of developing a Common European Energy Data Space, as announced in the European Strategy for Data.
The major concept of Enershare is to develop and demonstrate a European Common Energy Data Space which will deploy a trusted, secure and sovereign level playing field for energy data sharing and exchange among energy and non-energy stakeholders as well as it will span over two meaningful pillars: an “intra-energy” Data Space, aimed to design and demonstrate an “intra-electricity” and “across energy sector” trusted data exchange; and a “cross-sector” Data Space aimed to design, operationalise, and harmonise at EU level the beyond energy and cross-sector technology enablers for trusted, secure, sovereignty preserving data exchange. Therefore, it will significantly evolve the energy industry and make it fully sustainable as private consumers, energy and non-energy business stakeholders and regulated operators can make available their energy data, assets, and services. They can also access, share and reuse large sources of currently fragmented and dispersed data by leveraging on data-driven cross-value chain services and Digital Twins for various energy-related purposes.
“It becomes urgent to move forward the development of a Common European Energy Data Space. One of the key actions presented in the EC Recommendation for Energy System Integration is to streamline and deploy a Digitalisation of Energy Action Plan which could accelerate the implementation of digital solutions along a more integrated energy system, by leveraging on the seamless and interoperable data-driven interaction among energy and beyond stakeholders. Such huge demand for information requires new concepts, architectures, solutions, governance and business models suitable to the energy domain on how to share, trust and exchange data efficiently among and across energy and non-energy stakeholders”, – commented Dr. Massimo Bertoncini, Project Coordinator of Enershare, R&D Program Director for Digital Energy at ENGINEERING.
Thirty-one consortium members are combining their forces
The Enershare project, led by digital transformation key player ENGINEERING, comprises thirty-one consortium partners from Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Slovenia, and Spain. They are international organizations from energy sector, relevant industries, research institutions and academies as well as providers of digital transformation services in open standards and various energy sectors analysis: Asm Terni S.p.A, Basque Energy Cluster, Comsensus, Depa Commercial, Electricite De France, Elektro Celje, Elektro Ljubljana, Eles, Emotion, Engie, Envirodual, European Dynamics Luxembourg, European Dynamics, FIWARE Foundation, Fortum, Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, Hine Renovables, INESC TEC, International Data Spaces Association, Komunalno Podjetje Velenje, National Technical University of Athens, Nokia, R&D Nester, RWTH Aachen, Smart Energy Lab, Smart Innovation Norway, Tecnalia Research and Innovation Foundation, The Latvian Environmental Investment Fund, TNO, Trialog.
Interoperability, trust, data value: three innovative levels to digitize the energy sector
Over the next three years, the project consortium will develop and provide a Reference Implementation for a Common Energy Data Space which will leverage on the leading-edge Data Space architectures by FIWARE Foundation, International Data Space Association (IDSA) and European cloud initiative GAIA-X. It will enable to set up a level playing field for data sharing and aim at creating a single market for data to be shared and exchanged across sectors efficiently and securely within the EU. Thus, private and public entities can fully control the use of the data they generate, and both businesses and the public sector have easy access to a large pool of high-quality data. The Enershare concept is based on three levels:
- Interoperability and Data Space technological building blocks – Supporting the EU Strategy for Data acknowledges that Data Spaces should be interconnected and interoperable, Enershare will achieve the main Energy Data Space challenge consisting of two significant directions: first, it is providing interoperability among electricity and other non-electrical carriers, like for example, heat or gas; and second, interoperability among energy and non-energy domain like buildings, mobility, water, health or financial. Both directions will be successfully implemented by evolving and enabling standardisable and open, interoperable interfaces and APIs at the interplay among electricity and other energy and non-energy sectors, and leveraging on open standards, such as FIWARE ETSI Context broker, SGAM, CIM, SAREF.
- Trust and sovereignty for data sharing culture – Enershare will build on IDSA and GAIA-X Conceptual Architectures and will include in the IDSA Connector for Data Provider and Data Consumer energy-domain trust and sovereignty building blocks and functionalities adaptation, such as Federated Identity Management and Data Usage Policies definition. The project will also leverage on adaptation of Blockchain solutions to increase trust among stakeholders and data space operators or owners. It will enable trusted and full sovereign data sharing and exchange, keeping data owners in full control of their data.
- Data Governance Mechanisms and Data Value Stack – Data Value Chain assets, including data sources, data services, computing infrastructures, and data storage resources, will be valued, exchanged and reciprocally compensated in a financial and non-financial way by leveraging on a digital blockchain and smart contracts-based marketplace with different energy resources, assets and services. For example, it can be exchanging energy data against surplus of energy, renewable assets, smart home flexibility assets maintenance to social assistance or care services to more vulnerable people, such as elderly people. The development and deployment of the Enershare Data Value Stack will increase individual energy consumers participation in energy data sharing, based on the opportunity for data valuation and beyond-financial compensation.
Would you like to get more information about Enershare, please visit the official website: enershare.eu
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe Research and Innovation programme under the Grant Agreement No 101069831.
Press Office:
Kseniia Chernikova: kseniia.chernikova@fiware.org