Accelerators gear up at ESA’s Living Planet Symposium
Global climate change is the single most challenging issue faced by humanity – affecting every region, continent and ocean on Earth. It fuels a range of other top-level challenges such as food security, migration, biodiversity loss, risks to human health and economic losses.
This week, at ESA’s Living Planet Symposium taking place in Bonn, high-level ESA representatives, along with a mix of academia and policy experts, came together to discuss ESA’s ‘Space for a Green Future Accelerator’ – a major ESA initiative aiming to accelerate the use of space in Europe.
Introduced in 2021 by ESA’s Director General Josef Aschbacher, ESA Accelerators – Space for a Green Future, Rapid and Resilient Crisis Response, and the Protection of Space Assets – were identified as the main thematic areas of action on how to drive Europe’s innovation and use of space to solve wider societal issues.
Josef Aschbacher explained, “Space is witnessing global changes and undergoing a fundamental transformation and ESA is ready to take on this challenge. The three Accelerators, Space for a Green Future, Rapid and Resilient Crisis Response and the Protection of Space Assets, have been identified and chosen by the High-Level Advisory Group as the priorities for Europe’s collective efforts to increase the use of space for the benefit of its citizens, the environment and the economy.”
The Space for a Green Future Accelerator will deliver actionable information, assessing scenarios for policy implementation and tailored services for European decisionmakers to reach carbon neutrality by 2050 and establish global leadership in the competition for a rapidly emerging green economy. In doing do, it will also contribute to the European social and economic well-being, minimising the socio-environmental impacts caused by climate change.
Simonetta Cheli, ESA’s Director of Earth Observation Programmes, said, “The ‘Space for a Green Future’ Accelerator will provide European decision-makers, industry, and society with essential tools and solutions to support a sustainable Green Transition towards a carbon-neutral, resource-efficient and resilient society. It will stimulate the development, deployment and use of advanced data, science, technology, applications and services for a sustainable life on Earth.”
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There are four main elements to the Space for a Green Future Accelerator:
Digital Twin Earth
Digital Twin Earth will integrate all satellite data, combined with in situ measurements and artificial intelligence technologies, to create an interactive Digital Twin Earth – a replica of our planet. Utilising large-scale simulations and modelling, it will enable a more comprehensive understanding of the past, present and future aspects of the Earth system. The system will allow for generation of ‘what-if’ scenarios to assess the suitability of possible measures addressing societal challenges related to climate change.
In Europe, several programmes are being deployed including the Destination Earth (DestinE) programme in collaboration with the European Commission, the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) and the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (Eumetsat).
Green Information Factories
Recent digital platform technology has demonstrated the possibility to develop systems that clearly display indicators and key information in a simple manner depending on stakeholders’ needs. One example of the effective use of this technology is the Rapid Action on COVID and EO platform which demonstrates the possibility of the monitoring of key environmental parameters, such as air and water quality changes.
Stemming from this experience, the Green Transition Information Factories will aim to fully exploit the potential of space-based data to support the Green Transition. Data will be transformed into actionable knowledge that can be used in an operational context by different stakeholders engaged in the implementation of the Green Transition. The Green Transition Information Factories will accelerate how technological solutions and scientific data feed into policy action, the green economy and citizen awareness, and thanks to ESA’s partnership with the EU, it will directly power the ambitious goals of the Green Deal.
Quantum Missions for Climate
Observations from dedicated satellite gravity missions are key in monitoring the Earth system’s dynamic processes. Future satellite gravity missions, including the Mass change And Geosciences International Constellation (MAGIC), are expected to provide enhanced sustained observations with increased spatio-temporal resolution and with higher accuracies. Enhanced measurements will contribute to the improvement of the Essential Climate Variables with unprecedented quality for ground water, as well as unique measurements on climate applications.
Expanding the next generation of environmental observations with new and more accurate quantum gravimetry observations will bring our understanding of Earth’s system to the next level. It will enable applications such as better resource monitoring, improved earthquake prediction or better monitoring effects of climate change such as droughts or floods.
Accelerating Decarbonisation
The global economic benefit of a low-carbon future is estimated at €22 trillion by 2030. Developing green space solutions will help accelerate and re-orientate our society towards a carbon-free economy by 2050.
Space can support smarter cities, sustainable mobility and clean water. It can support cleaner energy with navigation satellites providing real-time information for optimised urban traffic modelling or autonomous vehicles. Earth observation data can be fed into urban planning, including renewable energy production, and can make agriculture more productive and government response more resilient in the face of extreme weather and catastrophes including floods or fires.
These green space solutions will enable European industrial actors to exploit the actionable information derived from the elements above to develop a roadmap and delve deeper into the decarbonisation opportunities for space upstream and downstream sectors.
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