The European Energy
Research Alliance (EERA),
the largest energy research
community in Europe,
has a strong ambition to be at the
forefront of the clean energy research
advancement.
For this reason, and
recognizing the cross-sectoral effort
that is needed to eventually drive
the profound societal transformation
required to achieve climate neutrality,
where information technologies
and the digitalisation of energy
play a critical and transformative
role, EERA has officially launched a
transversal Joint Programme (tJP)
on Digitalisation for Energy (DfE).
Digital technologies will absolutely
have a pivotal role to play in the
energy sector as they are needed
for improving the efficiency of either
a research or business’s process,
consistency, and quality, so EERA
has reinforced its strategic agenda by
having this specific programme
in EERA.
An EERA Joint Programme (JP) is
a permanent structure that allows
EERA to foster pan-European R&D&I
collaboration on a joint Strategic
Research and Innovation Agenda,
with the objective of building leadingedge
expertise in the various fields
of clean energy. On this occasion,
the structure of the new JP has
been designed as a cross-cutting
entity with the aim of leveraging
pre-existing expertise, and of
complementing it with high-level
scientific knowledge on the latest
digital concepts and technologies
with a special focus on high
performance computing (HPC), data
science, and artificial intelligence.
Digitalisation for Energy has its
roots in the expertise of numerous
researchers involved in EERA
activities, many of whom have
already been active in recent years
in projects related to information
technologies and digital challenges
in the clean energy field. Examples
of this focus can be found in the
projects EERAdata, which aims to
discuss and advance the state of the
art of FAIR and open energy data,
and the Energy-oriented Centre of
Excellence (EoCoE), offering an everexpanding
network of experts in
HPC and in sustainable energies,
from academia, industry, and the
public sector.
The Joint Programme in
Digitalisation for Energy integrates
on a modular basis all the existing
sub-programmes that, although
belonging to other established Joint
Programmes, had already developed
a particular expertise in digitalisation
topics. This innovative approach
in the implementation of the new
programme allows for an easy
integration with current and future
sub-programmes on digitalisation
(i.e., cybersecurity, blockchain, etc.).
Currently, Digitalisation for Energy
is structured as it follows: two
new sub-programmes launched
jointly with the Joint Programme,
namely: High Performance
Computing and Data Science and Artificial Intelligence; as well as four
transversal sub-programmes already
set up and belonging to other Joint
Programmes, namely: Technology
in JP Energy Systems Integration,
Multiscale modelling of materials,
processes and devices in JP AMPEA,
Digitalisation in JP Hydropower, and
Physical modelling, materials health
monitoring and non-destructive
microstructure examination in JP
Nuclear Materials.
Since its official launch in mid-
October 2020, the new EERA
transversal Joint Programme has
developed several activities aimed at
raising awareness of the programme
itself, with the purpose of creating
synergies and fostering cross-cutting
collaboration. A dissemination effort
has been carried out to promote the
programme with the energy and ICT
communities through participation
in well-recognised events such as
the HPC summit week 2021, the
upcoming European Sustainable
Energy Week 2021, ISC HPC 2021,
and the 11th ETIP SNET Regional
Workshop just to mention a few.
In parallel, efforts of this initial stage
are being focused on consolidating
synergies within EERA, not only on
strategic initiatives that concern
the whole EERA community, but
also on joint research efforts with
specific Joint Programmes, such
as a project on Energy Materials
for Innovation with JP AMPEA and
Nuclear Materials. Some of these
endeavors have already materialized
in a community paper, Advancing
FAIR metadata standards for low
carbon energy research’ ,under the
leadership of the EERAdata project,
and in a position paper about energy
and supercomputing that is being
drafted with the EoCoE project.
Moreover, the transversal Joint
Programme in Digitalisation is working
on collecting a map of numerical
codes, repositories, and digital
methodologies being exploited in the
energy sector that will eventually be
made public at the EERA website.
In summary, the transversal Joint
Programme in Digitalisation for
Energy is a materialization of EERA’s
acknowledgement of the crucial
role that information technologies
and digitalisation have in advancing
the clean energy transition towards
climate neutrality by 2050. Through
the transversal Joint Programme, the
Alliance aims at fostering research that
will be trans-disciplinary to all EERA
activities and to the whole energy
research community. The experience
derived from this process, as firstof-
a-kind cross-cutting structure, is
expected to help identify best practices
and lead the way to possible additional
transversal Joint Programmes within
EERA in the future.
About the European Energy Research Alliance (EERA):
The European Energy Research Alliance (EERA) is an association of European
public research centres and universities active in low-carbon energy
research. EERA pursues the mission of catalysing European energy research
for a climate-neutral society by 2050. Bringing together more than 250
organisations from 30 countries, EERA is Europe's largest energy research
community. EERA coordinates its research activities through 18 Joint
Programmes and is a key player in the European Union's Strategic Energy
Technology (SET) Plan. For further information, see https://www.eera-set.eu.