Joint EERA–EoCoE Position Paper on HPC for Energy
In response to the EU’s policy agenda for the energy sector, which links the strategy to accelerate decarbonization with the adoption of digital technologies, the European Energy Research Alliance (EERA) together with the Energy-oriented Centre of Excellence (EoCoE) has presented a joint position paper to the European Commission on the subject of exascale, and the great opportunity it represents for the clean energy transition in Europe.
As Europe works towards a decarbonized energy ecosystem, with a clear vision and goals set by the European Green Deal, EERA and EoCoE have identified a blind spot: energy domain scientists do not take full advantage of the potential that HPC-fuelled simulations can offer for their work. This situation is the result of a lack of HPC-related expertise available to scientists.
To this end, EERA recently created a transversal Joint Programme entitled “Digitalisation for Energy”, which allows a wide range of scientists in the energy domain to access the considerable expertise amassed through previous cross-domain collaborations between application experts and domain scientists explored in the EoCoE project. A number of pilot collaborations have already been established via this Joint Programme (in materials modelling, hydropower, and energy systems integration), with more to follow.
The position paper aims to trigger suitable coordination actions and funding decisions from the European Commission and Member States to support the development of tuned data models and simulation codes for topics in the field of energy. To do so, the paper proposes to make use of the latest technology in high-performance computing (HPC) and data management that is becoming available at EU level: the exascale generation. The paper was reviewed by a scientific committee including representatives from Forschungszentrum Jülich, and the editorial tasks were coordinated by JSC. The paper explores the role played by digital tools tuned for the energy sector in support of the transition towards climate neutrality. The full paper can be downloaded from the EERA website.
Contact: Dr. Maria Ramalho
from JSC News No. 288, 29 April 2022