Vortex R&D Director, Gil Lizcano, joined a live discussion panel with European Commission Vice-President, Maroš Šefčovič, together with Freja Vamborg (Copernicus) and Francesca Larosa (CCMC) last Thursday. The discussion served to gather constructive comments, both from the panelists and the online audience, on what the EU can do more, less or differently in order to allow space tech to play its role in climate action and mitigation.

Gil talked about the usefulness of Copernicus data in the wind industry; the data Vortex uses as an input to obtain information on wind resource. He highlighted the great qualitative leap of the Copernicus ERA5 project with respect to the previous reanalysis. To learn more about Vortex's use of Copernicus data, click here: Copernicus Cases Studies.

The Vice- President said that many companies such as Acciona or Siemens, base their business on historical wind series ike those provided by Vortex using the Copernicus data. He explained that knowing wind resource potential is crucial, not only for the success of these companies but also because of the intermittency of renewables and how this affects power system management.

As stated by Vice-President Šefčovič, ensuring an operational provision of high-quality, satellite-derived information, such as Copernicus Reanalysis and Vortex downscaling, is critical for Europe to make a transition towards a climate-smart economy.

The Copernicus program provides a unique tool to monitor the climate in near real time and to support transformative technologies that contribute to building a carbon neutral society. From the very early stages of a wind farm project to wind power production monitoring, Copernicus and Vortex downstreaming service facilitate the decision-making process with actionable and reliable information.