Towards a FAIR and open data ecosystem in the low carbon energy research community

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The majority of databases are unfit for deploying advanced analytical tools by humans and machines, causing forgone opportunities arising from advanced ICT solutions. It adds to the problem that the transition towards low carbon and sustainable energy systems requires the integration of interdisciplinary and complex data. It means that it is not sufficient to only account for physical and technical attributes, but also socio-economic and environmental ones. Otherwise, society is misinformed about the consequences of upcoming fundamental systemic changes, affecting acceptance building and the creation of ownership for the energy transition. Transparent and integrated management of energy data with useful metadata information and quality assurance provides the basis for society to choose, monitor, and implement sustainable transition pathways; and for the industry to be innovative. Therefore, databases need to adhere to the principles of open and FAIR data (findability, accessibility, interoperability, re-usability). However, the concepts and infrastructures for FAIR and open data management are currently not existing in low carbon energy research. The overall objective of EERAdata is to develop, explore, and test a FAIR and open data ecosystem. This new data infrastructure is established through the broad involvement of the energy research community in a series of workshops and is applied in four selected use cases, covering essential aspects of data-driven low carbon energy research. EERAdata also implements an open platform for uniform and seamless access to energy data and establishes a pool of experts and data stewards to facilitate a mental shift in the community towards FAIR and open data practices. A key element is the active linking of EERAdata to national initiatives, the European Open Science Cloud, the Research Data Alliance, and others. In this way, the project builds a critical mass to explore the prospects of large-scale FAIR and open energy data.