The energy transition and the decarbonization of economic activities demands growing numbers of datasets on increasingly diverse topics. That data is often scattered because heat and/or electricity don’t have common sources. Moreover, energy data is not always available, let alone accessible for non-specialists. This hinders broader participation and acceptance of socio-economic, technical and political measures towards less energy use from more renewable sources. From a research point of view, the unavailability or inaccessibility of data makes reproducibility difficult.
EnerMaps aims to improve data availability, data quality, and data management for the industry, in particular energy planners, managers, consultants, public administration officers in the energy sector as well as policy decision makers and social innovation experts. In other words, the objectives were to provide easy access to energy data under the FAIR principles and with open access tools. As expressed by the projects’ social innovation experts, this is a necessary step for everyone to access energy data and run their own analysis.
The objectives of EnerMaps were fully achieved in developing open science tools to map and analyze energy related data. Complete documentation through a wiki and GitHub as well as training material in the form of videos were released and are available through the projects’ website. The main conclusion of the project confirms the interest from public administration officers and others to use the tools developed within EnerMaps. This is also true for researchers, who can reuse and repurpose those tools to better fit their needs.
