The Energy and Infrastructure Sphere focuses on energy systems and critical infrastructure, with an emphasis on resilience, efficiency, and secure operations.
The sphere will be officially launched on 16 April, followed by a dedicated in-person workshop on 7 May titled “Empowering Energy Infrastructure: The Role of 5G/6G and Edge Intelligence.” The workshop will offer a valuable opportunity to engage with key stakeholders across the energy, IoT, and next-generation networks domains, exchange insights, and contribute to shaping the future of smart energy systems.
Energy and Infrastructure Resilience Sphere — Activities in Cycle 1
The CEI-Sphere Energy Sphere kick-off session, held on 16 April 2026, marked the beginning of a collaborative process to identify shared priorities and communicate challenges within the energy and infrastructure resilience domains. The discussion built on the results of a survey conducted across all CEI-Sphere domains prior to the event, which identified interoperability as the primary common challenge among participating projects. This finding was subsequently confirmed during the exchange of expertise and perspectives in the Energy Sphere, where participants also highlighted several related issues requiring further attention, including the convergence of energy and telecommunications infrastructures, cyber resilience, fragmented governance structures, the need for synergies with other ongoing energy projects, and regulatory differences across countries. Building on these discussions, the Empowering Energy Infrastructure Workshop was organized in Brussels on 7 May 2026, bringing together stakeholders from AIOTI, 6G and AI associations, the European Commission, and the CEI-Sphere Energy community.
The Energy Sphere panel focused on practical experiences from ongoing smart energy pilots — Brian O'Regan (International Energy Research Centre (IERC), O-CEI Pilot 1), Dimitrios Brodimas (enakronic, COP-PILOT E3), Maria Makrynioti (CERTH/ITI, O-CEI Pilot 7) — and commercial offerings — Bonaldi da Costa (Octopus Energy) — with the aim of moving beyond general assumptions about interoperability and gaining a better understanding of the operational barriers emerging in real-world deployments. A central theme across all use cases was the growing complexity of integrating distributed energy assets into scalable systems. Devices such as heat pumps, EV chargers, batteries, and solar inverters are still largely integrated individually into isolated environments, creating fragmented ecosystems that are difficult to scale and coordinate across stakeholders and national markets. The discussion underscored that achieving large-scale deployment of smart energy solutions in Europe will depend not only on technological innovation, but also on establishing common semantics and standards, interoperable frameworks, and coordinated governance that enable seamless integration across devices, platforms, stakeholders, and markets.
