Advancing climate services for the European renewable energy sector through capacity building and user engagement

C.M. Goodess (1) , A. Troccoli (2, 1) , C. Acton (3) , J.A. Añel (4) , P.E. Bett (3) , D.J. Brayshaw (5, 6) , M. de Felice (7) , S.R. Dorling (1) , L. Dubus (8) , L. Penny (1) , B. Percy (9) , Thierry Ranchin (10) , C. Thomas (11) , M. Trolliet (10) , Lucien Wald (10)

1 School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia
2 World Energy & Meteorology Council
3 UK Met Office
4 EPhysLab - Environmental Physics Laboratory
5 Department of Meteorology, University of Reading, Reading, UK
6 National Centre for Atmospheric Science, University of Reading, Reading, United Kingdom
7 ENEA Climate Modelling Laboratory
8 EDF R&D - EDF R&D
9 Institute for Environmental Analytics
10 O.I.E. - Centre Observation, Impacts, Énergie
11 Transvalor

The development of successful climate services faces a number of challenges, including the identification of the target audience and their needs and requirements, and the effective communication of complex climate information , through engagement with a range of stakeholders. This paper describes how these challenges were tackled during the European Climatic Energy Mixes (ECEM) project, part of the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), in order to deliver a pre-operational, proof-of-concept climate service for the European renewable energy sector. The process of iterative user engagement adopted in ECEM is described, from the initial presentation of the team's first vision for such a service to support external stakeholders, through to evaluation of the final interactive tool for visualisation, data download and supporting documentation (the C3S ECEM Demonstrator). The outcomes of this evaluation are outlined, together with a retrospective reflection on the engagement and development process. The extent to which co-production and co-design were achieved in practice is assessed. The paper also highlights the distance travelled from the start to end of ECEM in terms of building capacity, developing a community of practice, and raising the Technology Readiness Level. The relevance of ECEM for the European climate services market is briefly considered, including the development of downstream commercial services which build upon the public C3S services.

Domaines: Planète et Univers [physics]; Sciences de la Terre; Climatologie; Sciences de l'environnement; Sciences de l'environnement; Planification énergétique; Sciences de l'ingénieur [physics]

C.M. Goodess, A. Troccoli, C. Acton, J.A. Añel, P.E. Bett, et al.. Advancing climate services for the European renewable energy sector through capacity building and user engagement. Climate services, 2019, 16, pp.100139. ⟨10.1016/j.cliser.2019.100139⟩. ⟨hal-02402136⟩