With the completion of the project in December 2020, the S2S4E team wants to highlight some core aspects of the development of a climate service for energy: The S2S4E Decision Support Tool (DST).

The S2S4E project concludes, and the project coordinator, Albert Soret, shares his insights and final remarks on the work done in the last 3 years and the development of the S2S4E operational forecasting service.

Over the past few years, there has been a marked increase in the awareness across society of how decision-making in various sectors and contexts can benefit from having information about the weather to come weeks and months in advance.

On 2 and 4 December 2020, the S2S4E project held its two final events, aimed at policy and research audiences. 

For the past 3 years, the S2S4E project has worked to research and develop climate services for the renewable energy sector. With the project concluding its activities at the end of 2020, two final events were held on 2 and 4 December, with a focus on policy and climate forecasting research, respectively. 

S2S4E took part in a workshop that gathered together European projects from the Climateurope network to show the state of the art of climate visualisations.

Subseasonal and seasonal forecasts can help energy companies become aware of weather-related risks at an earlier stage and enable them to better prepare for them. They can also help them decide when to perform maintenance on their power plants. 

The sooner power producers get information on how weather conditions are likely to evolve over the coming weeks and months, the more time they have to prepare for them and to protect their power plants from potential hazards. 

When subseasonal and seasonal forecasts show skill and prove accurate, they can potentially help increase the earnings of the energy companies using them, as research by the S2S4E project shows. 

The S2S4E project is coming to an end, with three final events: a webinar on winter outlook, a policy panel discussion and a climate forecasting workshop.

After 3 years of research on sub-seasonal to seasonal forecasts and many lessons learnt, the S2S4E Climate Services for Clean Energy project is coming to an end in December 2020. The project is organising the final three online events: 

Following successive amendments of the major energy directives, EU policy has in recent years become more supportive of the use of weather and climate services, a policy analysis by the S2S4E project shows.

Better recognition of subseasonal and seasonal forecasts as a relevant solution to anticipate variations in renewable energy production is needed at the national level, an S2S4E analysis of energy policy in seven European countries shows.

Although it is possible for governments to support the use of subseasonal and seasonal forecasts – or of climate services more generally – measures designed specifically to that end at the national level remain rare. 

The increasing share of weather-dependent renewable energy makes it more important to have early information about the weather to come. The energy transition therefore increases the need for subseasonal and seasonal forecasts.

A couple of decades ago, when most of the electricity consumed in Europe was produced either by conventional power plants fuelled by fossil fuels or by nuclear power reactors, the amount of power generated was largely independent of the weather.