Episode Transcript
[00:00:10] Speaker A: Welcome to the EU Energy Projects Podcast, a podcast series from Enlida and France focusing on the clean energy transition for the European Union and the EU Commission funded energy projects that will help us achieve it. My name is Aretid Daradimu. I. I am the editor of the EU Energy Projects Podcast and your host.
Over the past few years, Europe has been accelerating its digital transformation, aiming to build smarter, more connected and more resilient energy and transport systems.
At the heart of this transition lies the need for secure, interoperable and cross border data digital platforms that can turn data into actionable intelligence. The EU funded Begonia project has been working to lay the foundations for next generation operational digital platforms, bringing together energy, mobility and data ecosystems across Europe.
In this new episode, we revisit the project to explore what has been achieved so far, what lessons have been learned and how Begonia is shaping the future of digital cooperation in Europe.
We're joined once again by Nicolo Fattiroli, COO of Olivo Energy and project Lead of the project Stakeholder engagement and communication Activities to discuss progress, impact and what comes next. First of all, thank you Nicolo for joining me again one more time to discuss Begonia. And for listeners who may be new to the project, can you briefly remind us what Begonia set out to achieve and and why it matters for Europe's energy and transport sectors?
[00:01:54] Speaker B: Yeah, and first of all, thank you very much for having me again, Areti, and pleasure to be here. In a nutshell, Begonia was set up to do essentially just a preparatory work. Okay. So we are not a conventional research project. At the end of the day, we are what is called a csa. And the idea that the Commission had was to task us to look around Europe, try to find best practices of what they call operational digital platforms, which is a term in which probably we're going to go back to these again maybe later on, because it's quite a complex term and now I think it's also evolving.
But in any case, these are essentially conceived as platforms both in the energy and possibly transport sectors that were cross border and that are a bit more strategic in nature and that can allocate a multitude of different services. So they don't have like a single owner. They can allocate a multitude of different stakeholders and different services and they can facilitate the digital transition, transformation and transition at the European level. So the idea was to try to look around Europe. I will go back to the beginning of my answer to try to find best practices of even inception of ideas of these otp to select them, starting in a pool big enough of ODPs and then once identified the best one, to try to develop them as much as possible and to bring them to a level that it was ready for implementation. So the implementation is not part of begonia. Our work was everything that is in order to facilitate the implementation of these
[00:03:31] Speaker A: platforms since the project's launch. How has the project evolved in terms of ambition, scope and real world application?
[00:03:40] Speaker B: Quite a lot. So essentially we started the beginning of 24 and what we did again at the very beginning was either both directly and through our network of contacts, just again to try to identify very interesting use cases of operational digital platforms, even if they were not already very much developed, even if they were just only an idea. What we did is that we identified 14 of them. Some of them were purely energy related, otherwise purely transport related. Many of them were actually already both of them. Okay, from these 14 we did an exercise that was both internal and again through questionnaires and involvement of external stakeholders. And what we did is that from the 14 we went, we filtered them and also merged a few of them to reach only six use cases. Okay, These six use cases again were further developed and investigated. Of course, this kind of investigation and development, we have been doing it for a very long time and it was from every point of view, from the. We run regulatory analysis, we tried to identify the best possible governance for each of them. We did cost benefit analysis, we developed technical architecture, and at the end of this exercise we had quite developed use cases of operational digital platforms very, very different from one another.
And at the end what we had to do, unfortunately, because this was the request of the commission since the very beginning, we had to filter them again.
So from six use cases we had to decide which were on, from our point of view, the three best ones. Okay, this was around June last year that we had to make this, this hard call to select only three, because we believe that there were the three with the best chances of being implemented. Again, they were not necessarily the three best ones overall, but of course they had extremely solid elements. But especially they were the ones with the best impacts and the ones that we, that we thought they were more ready to actually being implemented in a reasonable amount of time.
This was an exercise that again lasted more than a year and a half. We ended in June, July of last year, 2025, and since then what we have been doing is a job of testing them. So we have started to run some pilots. Of course we do not have them also at other European research projects have so Everything that we're doing is purely virtual. But as together with partners that have been interested in these operational digital platforms, we have been trying as much as possible to test the functionalities and to try to solve the most obvious issues that these OTPs have. This is something that is still ongoing and this will last until the end of May this year. And then what's going to happen is that they're going to recollect all of the information that we have gathered and we are going to present them to the Commission and to the interested stakeholders by the end of June.
[00:06:40] Speaker A: Quite the achievement, I would say, especially taking it down to three. I wouldn't want to be in your shoes, let me put it this way, but you've been mentioning ODPs. ODPs, I mean, I think it's about time we explain what it is. So how have the cross border operational digital platforms, because that's what ODP means, correct me if I'm wrong, been translated from concept into working solutions on the ground and maybe briefly also tell our audience basically what ODPs are.
[00:07:10] Speaker B: So at the very beginning of the project I think that we had a definition that we had in the context, but it was still very much up to interpretation. Right? What we did is that I think that we have developed our own concept of the ODP and we have understood really well what is that we mean by NODP while we were working on it, because of course we had to put together a lot of different pieces of information from the way that the stakeholders were behaving, from how we could actually connect different sectors, from how we could provide these services across borders. I think that what I can tell you is that of course we have done this work from the concept of just the idea to basically bring these three use cases of ODPs almost ready for an actual implementation.
And even if this work is still not done, of course we are still going to need a few months. And at the same time of course we have developed like a quite clear idea of what an ODP is. And I think that first and foremost the anodp, it is indeed a digital platform, right? But is more strategic in nature. It's not just a normal data space, for instance, data spaces are extremely important, they're vital for Europe.
They're under a huge development at this stage, but they're a bit different from an odp. An ODP is more strategic in nature. Again, this is one of the first characteristics. The second one is that it offers like service orchestration. You don't offer only one service it's kind of like a digital space in which multiple stakeholders can enter and offer their own services that of course they have to belong to a concept. And maybe later I can explain one of our use cases. So this is going to become clearer. But it's not one platform that does one thing. It's more one space that allows multiple service providers to actually enter and provide their services and to orchestrate among all of them.
Third characteristic is that ideally this is both cross border and cross sector. So this is not something that is supposed to work only in one country. The idea is absolutely this has to work in multiple countries and possibly to be scaled at the European level, which is one of the key challenges of our operation. Digital platforms. And of course in many, many cases, even if this is not like absolutely necessary all the time, but in many cases it is also cross sector.
So it is both especially energy and transport related, but this is not a necessity. There are some one of our use cases that is not transport related, is only energy related. But there is, let's say that there is always the potential for offering the two things at once. Right. And I think that maybe later on I can actually provide an example of one of our use cases and all these things will actually become quite evident. What I can say is that in any case we are preparing a document of what is essentially an odp, which is short for Operational Digital Platform, of course, an ODP blueprint. And what is that? We mean as an OTP that hopefully we should be able to publish it within the month of March.
[00:10:23] Speaker A: Oh, that sounds nice. Dibs on that publication so that we write something about it at Enlit World.
Speaking of examples, which of the pilot use cases best demonstrates Begonia's potential and why?
[00:10:36] Speaker B: I don't think that I can actually pick one because since we have worked on them so much, they are probably all of them, they can represent very much what we do. What I can say maybe I can pick one only because this is more evident also the cross sector aspect. Right. So we have our second odp.
What it does, it is essentially a digital platform in which again you can provide multiple services, of course across border. Definitely they are quite related with electric mobility. Okay. But again, and here you will see why I've been stressing the fact that this is not only one service, it's service orchestration. Because this is a platform that is meant for different service providers to enter. They can be both energy trucks providers that what they do is that they provide services for the best routing outside of the charging services on the other hand, you can have normal charge point operators for electric vehicles. What they can do, they can use the same platform to actually offer the channel charging for the electric vehicles. But this is only the surface because there are multiple other services that are actually connected to those. For instance, one of the things that the platform offers is to give the possibility to these actors to understand in which countries, for instance, the renewable generation is higher and the grid is less congested to put more competitive energy offers for charging in these countries.
There are a lot of use cases of bordering countries where there are a lot of people that are actually commuting from both of them. And this has the meaning of incentivizing the charging at times where the renewable energy consumption generation is higher and the grid congestion is lower, benefiting both the final user, of course, but also the grid operators, because this way, of course, the grid is way more manageable.
This is possible only if this platform also offers space inside itself and services to energy retailers, because energy retailers need to have access to all this data, need to have access to all the projection of renewable generation and are able to create some dynamic tariffs that the users can see so that the actual price of the electricity for charging is lower when the renewable generation is higher or when the grid congestion is lower.
So there is a locational aspect, there is of course something a lot of aspects that are related to the energy forecast of the wholesale markets.
But and you can see why this platform kind of puts together a little bit of everything. There is transport for e mobility, both trucks and cars. There is energy because they're charging itself, has multiple stakeholders because they are the actual drivers. So the final users, the providers, the DSOs, the energy retailers, and of course on top of the top everything else.
It also offers a space for aggregators. They can be the energy retailers themselves or external ones to aggregate the capacity of the electric trucks or electric vehicles that are connected in the rear while charging and offer services to the grid operators, both DSOs and TSOs for grid balancing.
Yet other players that add to the mix of this very complex platform that again, of course will work cross border.
[00:14:01] Speaker A: Nicolo, this sounds kind of complicated and challenging, technologically speaking, if we add to this that we have different systems and different countries that you play with, for lack of better word, right now, how do you ensure, for example, interoperability?
[00:14:18] Speaker B: Yeah, but that is the challenge. The challenge is not the technology in the sense that the service providers, the moment that they join the platform, they already have the solution, solutions already developed. So the problem is not the technology the problem is indeed the regulation. And we can put in the, you know, under the umbrella of the regulation, also the problem of interoperability in the sense that what we had made sure of is that everything that we are developing is absolutely in line with the European regulation. So everything that we are, that we are pushing is backed up, let's say, by everything that Europe wants to do. So it's kind of future proof. We made sure that everything that we are doing is completely in line with the European regulation and directives. And this means that everything that we are developing is kind of future proof. However, the problem usually is in the regulatory fragmentation among all the different countries that we have in Europe.
And of course, this is also about data interoperability. So for the interoperability, there is no easy solution yet. But of course, things are actually progressing, for instance, with the Data Governance act and the Data act that are kind of like laying the foundations for some of the.
To try to solve as much as possible the interoperability issues. Right. However, let's say that we have suggested also the integration with existing external platforms and interoperable data spaces frameworks like Gaia X idsa, meaning that we are not proposing anything new, we are actually proposing something that builds up in existing solutions. Right. And we are seeing a lot of European initiatives and projects that are trying to solve the issue of innovation interoperability. So, long story short, the problem exists, but of course, there are some solutions for the medium and long term, for sure. What can be difficult is to implement tomorrow morning all the services at once. That's definitely true, but this is also a problem of the regulation itself. And all the, and all the. Just for instance, if we talk about market participation, this is a problem because of the regulatory fragmentation that we still have in Europe. However, everything in theory will actually be solved in the years to come.
[00:16:28] Speaker A: Exactly with the various acts that are coming from the European Commission.
So basically, if I understood correctly, you have regulatory barriers, not technological, that much that in the future will be solved, hopefully. What about data? Data sharing is also central to the project. How did you address issues like cybersecurity, privacy and trust among partners?
[00:16:51] Speaker B: Yeah, these are a really good question. So I mean, for the cybersecurity part is essentially, again, we did two things in parallel.
On one hand, of course, we had to make sure that we were ticking all the boxes of what the European regulations say about cybersecurity and the national regulations say about cybersecurity.
And of course, while we were doing it, when the technical architecture of the ODPs were developed, of course, the technical partners, they did it, they had to take the these matters absolutely as critical. There is for instance, one point that I think is particularly important, which is artificial intelligence. Of course, nowadays it's impossible to decouple data to artificial intelligence. This is kind of unavoidable. Right. So everything that you do with that involves data, somehow it touches artificial intelligence. And we know that there is like there have been some regulatory developments around artificial intelligence from the eu.
And there of course, when artificial intelligence is dealing with sensitive data, you have to be extremely careful. And of course, in the development and in the architecture of these ODPs, of course we have to mention all the countermeasures that have to be taken into account the moment that you use artificial intelligence with especially energy and transport, that are of course very sensitive. So this has been highlighted very clearly and we have proposed some measures to
[00:18:16] Speaker A: try to address the issue about the pro sector collaboration. How was the experience with of this collaboration between energy, transport, digital stakeholders, everything together?
[00:18:27] Speaker B: I would say that it's not like these ODPs, essentially they give a clear space for different players.
So I think has not been as bad as someone might think of it.
Of course, sometimes probably the challenge, but is more in the development itself, is to make people that are very used to work with data understand the reality of the implementation in the sense that data is like cross border by nature, for instance. Right. So there is no problem there.
If you want to create a digital twin, you can create a digital twin, there is no problem. But then if you want to use the services to actually make an activation in an electricity market or to charge an electric vehicle somehow, then you hit the problem of the regulation. So it was more like an exercise of making everyone understand the different, the differences. Right. Of the different services or the different barriers that we had in front of us than anything else. Right. So, and at the end of the day, I think that many players are perfectly aware of the fact that these sectors are very much interconnected, which of course facilitated our work.
[00:19:38] Speaker A: Exactly. And that was my question, because sometimes these sectors, even though they are interconnected a lot, I mean, one cannot discuss transport without energy, for example. They tend to be in little silos, seeing only their own issues and their own achievements. So I feel that Begonia is having a Herculean, in a way task trying to break down these silos. So what value would you say does the project bring today to operators, policymakers and technology providers, given the discussion we've had so far?
[00:20:12] Speaker B: This is a really big question.
So again, I think that the solution providers, the main thing for them is to see the value of operating in these platforms, right? And the potential that these platforms would actually have for them. Since we did our work to be completely transparent, that is more preparatory. As I said at the very beginning, I think that many players know perfectly then the issues become more evident the moment that you start implementing. So we did our best effort to actually make everything kind of ready for implementation. But we are perfectly aware of the fact that the implementation itself will pose another set of different challenges.
And I think that many players are perfectly aware of that and they know that there will be the moment in which these challenges will actually have to be addressed. Basically what we did was to show that there is a way to do it right, having, having the proper funding when it comes to the policymakers. I think that we are participating in a kind of, in a stream of different European initiatives and projects that are all around, like the CEPH Digital, that are very much interconnected to each other. And this is something that I see extremely positive because it's true that all these projects are talking to each other, they're interacting among each other. And this, from what I know, is that it's actually very well seen because it means that there is a lot of knowledge transfer and a lot of help and backup between all the different projects. And to actually reach a reply to your question for the policymakers, I think that the outcomes that we can bring in terms of the implementation possibility, in terms of the development of the concept of the odp, added to everything else that other projects are doing in terms of maybe more of interoperability and everything else is actually can actually guide them into the new work line of funding on one hand and probably of policy making on the other hand. Because of course, even if, to be honest and to be completely fair with the Commission, I don't think that we have a problem with the regulation at the European level. The European regulation is actually quite clear, is actually quite supportive, sometimes is not strict enough, probably, but usually the issue is when we come to the national level and to the national implementation also, because it's very complicated. So there is no denying there. But in any case, I hope that also we're going to have an impact to try to make policymakers at all levels, European and national, understanding the benefits of actually having like an interoperable system, having like a unique market, connecting different players in different countries and providing services, no matter of your location.
[00:22:49] Speaker A: Actually, it's refreshing what you say, because I agree with you. The Problem, I think, is not the Commission and the regulations from the Commission. Yes, of course, improvements can be made everywhere, but the real problem is the local authorities and the local, let's say priorities, but staying a little bit in the wider, let's say, EU priorities. Would you say that Begonia aligns with the priorities of the EU and EU Commission on Digitalization, Decarbonisation and Energy Security?
[00:23:17] Speaker B: Definitely. So to be honest, we made sure since the very, very beginning that we were aligned.
And I think this question actually allows me to bring me to a point that we are still discussing, we're also discussing it with the Commission, but I think it's very interesting so how the concept of, of the operational digital platform will actually link and translate into the concept of the digital spine, which is the new big round of research and investment that Digi Connect especially is actually, is actually pushing for. Right. So my. The point is here that there has to be continuity.
And what we will be doing in the context of the development of the concept of ODP that I was mentioning before, that we are trying to put down in this white paper that we're publishing, is also already trying to identify the connection with the new work stream of the Commission. Right. So we were aligned before, since the very beginning, during the project, we made sure that we were still very, very much aligned with the current and future European regulations. And now what we are doing is to try to make this connection even more evident. Let's just put it this way.
[00:24:30] Speaker A: Are the tools and the platforms of Begonia ready for wider market uptake and replication? Because it's good to discuss things in theory, but I would like us to go a little bit in practice.
[00:24:43] Speaker B: In theory, yes, you have to start somewhere in the sense that quite likely it is possible and it will be possible to deploy the solutions of Begonia, but starting in one market or maybe two. Right. What's going to be challenging probably is to have immediately an EU wide deployment. And the reason is especially, first of all, because in any case, the players need to know about it. The players need to adjust to this kind of new concept, which is not always necessarily easy, but it is especially, I would say, again, interoperability and regulatory fragmentation. So again, it might be possible to deploy the use case 1 or use case 2 of Begonia or use case 3. They are the three main ones that we have at this stage in a couple of countries, in couples of countries, because we made sure of that. However, what might be challenging today, again, is to deploy them in multiple countries at the same time because of These barriers. However, I'm quite confident that in the next few years, since we are very much aligned with European regulation, this will actually be possible.
[00:25:50] Speaker A: As we said at the beginning, Begonia is already going for a couple of years. Right. I was wondering, do you have any lessons that you learned from your time with Begonia that you would like to share with other EU funded projects and especially working on the digital transformation?
[00:26:09] Speaker B: The first one is absolutely to try to cooperate with the sister projects as much as possible possible because there is a lot to learn and you have a lot of best practices, findings, achievements that you can share with one another. And this is something that, to be honest, the assisted project do not need my advice because they're already doing it very, very well. But if there is anyone who doesn't know about it, I would say that to do it absolutely, and as much as possible, because I see this particularly positive and very interesting.
So we are not competitors here.
These are all research initiatives trying to solve similar issues from different points of view. So there is a lot of cooperation there. The other thing that I can say is that we are a very small consortium and this is very, very easy to work in a small consortium. Sometimes we see consortia made up of 30, 40, 50 different companies that are a bit of a nightmare. But we are seven, which from one point of view means that there is a huge workload for each of them. So we could have been 10, probably, but is very, very efficient the way that we run things. Right. So this might seem like a very trivial suggestion, but if you're thinking to apply for this kind of project, this is actually really, really good.
To keep the numbers down.
[00:27:30] Speaker A: No, it makes total sense. And now I can actually tell you from the inside, because ENLIT participates in the consortium of a project decoded as dissemination communication lead. And you are absolutely right, clusters are the way to go because we've learned a lot from projects that are within the clusters that we participate in. And you're right, sometimes it's good to keep the numbers down because it can be a polyphony, can be a beautiful thing, but sometimes it can also prohibit progress. I couldn't agree more. Looking beyond the project's lifetime, looking beyond the lifetime of Begonia, where do you see the project?
What do you see that the project's long term legacy will be?
[00:28:13] Speaker B: First and foremost, the concept of the odp. This is, I think, one of the most important thing and most important outcomes of begonia. 100% second of all the use cases that we have developed. Right. Because these use Cases are extremely interesting and they are already basically done from the conceptual point of view, of course. Right. So then there is the immense effort of the actual implementation, but we have done all the background work, let's say, so they are kind of ready to be taken by interested parties and brought forward.
I think again that it will be interesting to explore them for whoever is interested in them, of course, one by one, because they're very, very different.
So it might be that very different players are interested in each of them and it might be possible actually to connect them with this new work stream of the commission of the digital spine that I was mentioning before. Right. Because they're quite aligned with that and it might be possible actually to take our outcomes, to bring them there and hopefully actually to bring them to implementation. It is also possible that just part of the solutions that we are presenting can be taken by Swanman and implemented. This is absolutely up to them, of course, but I think that there is like a massive amount of knowledge that had been prepared and now it's a matter of taking what whoever is interested sees as potentially aligned with their plans, of course, and bring it to implementation. And this can be done both privately without necessarily going through a round of European funding, or even better, of course, through a follow up project. And what we will be doing from now on was in any case is to do to interested initiatives and players a bit of knowledge transfer just to facilitate this kind of potential exercise. Of course, that will go beyond the typical dissemination and communication is going to be something more tailored.
[00:30:14] Speaker A: This connects nicely to the last question that I have for you because we're reaching the end of our discussion. I would like to know what the next steps are, are for the consortium and how can stakeholders that are already engaged or want to engage with Begonia, how can they stay engaged with the project's future developments?
[00:30:32] Speaker B: Yeah, and thank you very much for the question, because I think that this is very important for us to make everyone aware of this, what we are doing right now, as I was saying before, we are doing some testing and some piloting on the three use cases that we have.
These stakeholders can engage with us even in this activity, because of course, the moment that we're going to have our results done, we will again reach out to whoever is interested and has an expertise, of course, in one of the sectors that we are touching with each of our use cases to ask for the feedback. Whoever is interested, of course, can reach out to us.
We have our email addresses that we have shared, I think multiple times. We have our website and and in address even there to actually reach out to us in order to participate into this feedback exercise. But this is just the easiest or the most useful for us directly.
At the same time though, what we are doing is that we are doing three things in parallel just for stakeholders that would like to know even more. One is aside of the typical communication and dissemination activities and part of them is that we're going to organize quite likely other two webinars of Begonia. One will be centered quite likely on the concept of the ODP to deep dive on it. And hopefully we will do it also with sister initiatives and projects.
And we will also have a final workshop at the very end of our project in the context of our final meeting where we will basically present our recommendation and key takeaways of the project.
Right.
The second point is this knowledge transfer initiative actually that we will be launching in March that will be directed to system initiatives but also private stakeholders course that are interested in the concept that we have developed. And again, the difference between these sessions and workshop for the general audience will essentially be that we're going to try to tailor as much as possible this hour of training for the interests of whoever is asking for it. Right. So this will be essential in order strans. They can be on the concept of the ODP itself, they can be on a specific use case, they can be on the technical architecture, they can be a little bit about everything so that whoever is interested can have like a bit of a jump start in order to take over and possibly do something with all the information that we have actually prepared. Right.
And this is the. The second main modality, the third main modality. Sorry. So just to summarize webinars for the general audience that we're going to prepare the knowledge transfer initiatives and of course the possibility to participate in this kind of feedback for the results of our piloting to top it all and disconnected kind of with everything that I just said and I'm going to repeat myself again. We are going to also publish this ODP white paper quite likely within the month of March.
[00:33:38] Speaker A: Excellent. Looking forward to read the white paper and actually also to watch the webinars. Thank you very much Nicola for this conversation.
[00:33:46] Speaker B: Thank you so much for having me.
[00:33:50] Speaker A: You've been listening to the EU Energy Projects podcast at Podcast brought to you by Enlit and friends. You can find us on Spotify, Apple and the Enlit World website.
Just hit subscribe and you can access our other episodes too. I'm Aretita Radimo. Thank you for joining us.
