GEO Vision for Energy

Development of renewable energy (RE) is critical in combatting climate change and transitioning to a more sustainable energetic system. The development, operation and maintenance of RE systems needs a set of information that Earth observations can provide worldwide.

GEO Vision for Energy (GEO-VENER) aims at developing and promoting the use of Earth observations to serve the development, operation and maintenance of RE systems. GEO-VENER is built on the community portal webservice-energy.org, to serve the progress of RE by providing interoperable and GEOSS compliant access to documented, precise, trustable (or bankable) data, observation, information, knowledge and services related to RE.

The GEO-VENER initiative supports the development of operational services made available to the RE community.

• SDG7 targets in terms of ensuring access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy. Access to affordable and reliable energy is critical to ensuring services that improve human health and development.
• The Paris Agreement within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), aims to limit the increase in global average temperature through mitigation efforts, increase the ability of countries to adapt to climate change impacts and foster climate change resilience, and promote climate resilient development through financing.
• The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction focuses on reducing direct disaster economic loss, disaster damage to critical infrastructure and disruption of basic services, among them health and educational facilities.

GEO-VENER was created to ensure a more efficient link between the renewable energy community and the GEO Community, and to stress the benefits of Earth observation data for decision-making in the development of RE. GEO-VENER tackles the daily operation of RE systems, to ensure optimal functionality and performance under the nominal production. The most promising RE systems in terms of increase of installed capacities are solar and wind energy, however, marine and biomass energies, hydro systems and geothermal can also participate in a de-carbonized energy mix. Earth observations including satellite data and in-situ measurements provide information that make issues detectable and can support decision making on the energy mix that contributes to energy-related CO2 emission reductions and combatting climate change.

GEO-VENER also uses Earth observation and climatologic data to help identify trends, threats and opportunities that support the decision-makers by advocating and engaging the users and delivering Earth observation-based solutions in the RE domain. GEO-VENER builds capacity in increasing awareness and utilization of Earth observation for resilience planning for utility infrastructure and operations to prepare for future extreme events and other impacts of climate change, minimize damage to infrastructure, and maintain reliable access to energy services, thereby minimizing impact to other sectors.