The Energy Data Space Ecosystem within Gaia-X

What is Gaia-X?

Gaia-X is an association that was launched in 2020 with 22 founding members. The initial idea was to support European sovereign data exchanges based on trust, including the development of cloud technology. The main expectations were the following:

1. To establish a dialogue with both, service providers and data users at the European level to build industry standards for the data managed by these actors
2. To establish criteria to define trusted clouds at the European level
3. To construct European data exchange projects or ‘dataspaces’, which are secure and decentralized, in various industrial fields

What are the results?

Four years later, the objectives have largely been achieved.

1. The association has grown rapidly and now consists of more than 330 members – large groups, SMEs, associations, research institutes – from over 20 countries of the European Union, the United-States, and Japan.
2. The association has developed its specifications, particularly the rules defining compliance, and defined three levels. The first level allows for the definition of rules in terms of cybersecurity, personal data, and portability. The second level requires an option for data to be stored in Europe. The third level applies to a higher level of cybersecurity, data storage in Europe, and European cloud operators.
3. Large European data exchange projects in various fields have been created based on Gaia-X standards: logistics, automotive, mobility, energy, health, media, etc., developing uses cases, data interoperability, and data services.

The energy data ecosystem within Gaia-X

In terms of energy, the members of Gaia-X have worked together on use cases related to the energy transition and low carbon energy, based on decentralized and trusted data sharing. Subsequently, four European consortium projects related to energy and compliant with Gaia-X were selected and founded by the European Commission, in order to be the foundations of a large “Common European Energy Data Space”.

The key use cases are related to renewable energies, electromobility, the development of electrical flexibilities, as well as local energy communities.

These four projects represent a total of 22 countries, 94 companies, associations, or research organizations, including 10 members of Gaia X. EDF, a leading European electric utility, is a member of three of these projects. Equally, other large European energy companies are members as well, which allows for the construction of decentralized data exchanges according to interoperable architectures.

Two major projects – Omega-X (European) and energy data-X (German) – have been selected to become flagship projects of Gaia-X. Large projects continue to be established. The challenge remains the same: to provide an ecosystem for the development of use cases at European scale, to foster the energy transition, and to reach carbon neutrality; thus, sharing data in a trusted, secured, and sovereign way, reaching a significant size and becoming a reference in the industry.