SAGE Project Launches to Turn Green Deal Ambitions into Data-Driven Reality

The SAGE project (the Data Space for a Sustainable Green Europe) launched with a two-day kick-off meeting in Warsaw from 13–14 March 2025, uniting stakeholders from across Europe’s data landscape to accelerate progress toward the European Green Deal. Building on the momentum of the Data Spaces Symposium 2025, the event marked the start of a collaborative effort to break down data silos, integrate AI-driven solutions, and deliver actionable insights for sustainability goals like Zero Pollution, Biodiversity, and Climate Adaptation.

Coordinated by IDC Italy and funded under the Digital Europe Programme with a total budget of about €16 million (half funded by the EC) and more than 40 partners, SAGE will establish a fully operational Green Deal Data Space (GDDS). This platform will enhance the accessibility, integration, and usability of environmental data across the EU to support critical priorities such as Zero Pollution, Climate Adaptation, Biodiversity, and the Circular Economy Action Plan.

By federating fragmented datasets and enriching them with interoperable metadata, robust validation, and AI-driven analytics, SAGE will empower businesses, governments, researchers, and citizens to make data-driven decisions aligned with sustainability goals. The project builds on outcomes from the GDDS GREAT project. It aligns with the European Strategy for Data and Horizon Europe research programmes, as well as with key initiatives in the European research landscape such as Destination Earth and the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC).

Cristina Maier (EC, DG Connect, Project Officer), Sotirios Kanellopoulos (EC, DG ENV), Manlio Bacco (EC, JRC), and Ana García Robles (Data Spaces Support Centre) were also present at the meeting and provided a high-level introduction and overview.

As a key partner, the EGI Foundation leads Work Package 3 (GDDS Service Integration, Deployment, and Operations), tasked with delivering an operational GDDS by integrating proven digital capabilities. The Work Package also includes EGI Federation members GRNET, CYFRONET, and UPV which will contribute with their long-standing expertise on AAI, Monitoring solutions, Service Catalogues and Marketplace, and orchestration solutions to automate access to compute and storage resources. EGI’s work will unfold in two phases:

Expected results include FAIR-compliant datasets, 10 actionable pilot use cases ranging from forestry to biodiversity and environmental hazards, a thriving stakeholder ecosystem, and sustainable governance mechanisms to ensure the GDDS’s long-term viability.

“EGI is playing a key role in contributing to strategic operations of the Green Deal Data Space,” said Giuseppe La Rocca, Community Support Team Lead at the EGI Foundation. “The technical architecture of the GDDS will be demonstrated by pilot use cases from SMEs and not-for-profit organisations active in different domains. Specifically, these pilots will help us demonstrate the practical implementation of data sharing and integration, and generate new opportunities for value creation.”

To ensure continuity beyond the project’s end in February 2028, SAGE aims to establish a dedicated company to operate and scale the GDDS. This sustainability plan aligns with the Digital Europe Programme’s focus on market-ready solutions, ensuring the platform remains a cornerstone of Europe’s green and digital transformation.