Policy Brief: Unlocking The Full Potential Of The Green Deal Data Space

Environmental data are essential enablers of the European Green Deal. They support informed decisionmaking, underpin effective regulation, drive innovation, and empower society to act. Yet today, much of these data remains fragmented, inaccessible, or underutilised, creating significant barriers that limit Europe’s progresstowards its climate goals. The Green Deal Data Space (GDDS) is envisioned as a solution to overcome these challenges and foster trusted exchange of public and private data across all areas of the green transition. To be effective, the GDDS must uphold the principles of Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability and Reusability (FAIR). Four projects—AD4GD, B-Cubed, FAIRiCUBE and USAGE—funded under the HORIZONCL6-2021-GOVERNANCE-01-17 call have explored and documented the requirements for successfully achieving this. The GDDS will be implemented through the SAGE project (The Data Space for a Sustainable Green Europe) and will build on the results of the GREAT initiative (Governance of REsponsible innovATion). After three years of intensive work, the four projects here join forces to present, in a single comprehensive document, a set of recommendations to guide the successful implementation of the Green Deal Data Space in the years ahead. The recommendations explore data harmonisation, semantic interoperability, metadata, data exchange and governance.