Data Card - Cohesion policy and climate change research: projects of the CMCC Foundation
On Sunday, 20 November 2022, two days behind schedule, the 27th edition of the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27) came to a close in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt. More than 45,000 people attended this most important, multilateral gathering of governmental institutions with the goal of combating climate change in order to share ideas, discuss solutions, and form partnerships and coalitions. In addition to representatives of the governments of over 190 nations and of the European Commission, representatives of indigenous populations, cities, local communities and civil society, including children, came to Egypt to show how they are dealing with climate change and the impact it is having on their lives.
COP27 adopted an implementation plan that “[r]ecognizes that limiting global warming to 1.5 °C requires rapid, deep and sustained reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions of 43 per cent by 2030 relative to the 2019 level”. A new United Nations report on climate change, published just a few days prior to the start of the conference in Sharm El-Sheikh, showed that countries are bending the curve of global greenhouse gas emissions downward, but it underscores that these efforts are still insufficient to limit the increase in global temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius by the end of this century. According to the report, the collective climate commitments of the 193 Parties involved in the Paris Agreement could lead to a global warming of about 2.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the century, whereas the target set in 2015, at COP21 held in Paris, was to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Unfortunately, with the current “emission reduction” commitments, emissions will increase by 10.6% above 2010 levels by 2030.
On 8 November, the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, also spoke during a plenary session at COP27. During her speech, she reiterated Europe’s commitment to be a leader in the fight against climate change, saying, “We will reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55% until 2030. And that is cast in law. With our Fit for 55 Package, we are putting in place the most ambitious legal framework worldwide. And we call on all major emitters to increase their ambitions, too.”
On 8 and 9 November, the European Parliament and the Council reached an agreement on the Member States’ Effort Sharing Regulation, which is part of the Fit for 55 climate package. By 2030, Italy will need to have reduced greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture, transport, construction and small-scale manufacturing by 43.7% from 2005 levels. This calls for increased effort in the country, given that the current national target is for a 33% reduction.
Beginning with the 2014-2020 programming cycle, cohesion policy, too, calculates support for the European Union climate change objectives for each area of action of the European structural funds. At OpenCoesione, it is possible to conduct research by way of a specific focus for which a data card was created in March 2022. This new area of focus is inspired by a consideration found in the COP27 decision, the text of which “recognizes that [combating climate change] requires accelerated action in this critical decade, on the basis of equity and the best available scientific knowledge”.
In Italy, some of the best scientific knowledge includes the work conducted by researchers affiliated with the CMCC (Centro Euro-Mediterraneo sui Cambiamenti Climatici), a climate-change research centre founded in 2005 with the support of what was then the Italian Ministry of Education and Research and now of the Ministry for Environmental Protection. This entity is fuelled by the vast experience in the field of research of nine partners that came together in 2015 to form a foundation (i.e. the National Institute of Geophysics and Vulcanology, the University of Salento, the Italian Centre for Aerospace Research, Ca’ Foscari University in Venice, the University of Sassari, the University of Tuscia, Politecnico di Milano, Resources for the Future, and the University of Bologna). The CMCC was at COP27 and organized or attended a series of events aimed at discussing both the paths that Italy can take to limit the increase in global temperatures to within 1.5°C and the relationship between journalism, the media and storytelling around the climate crisis.
In conjunction with COP27, OpenCoesione interviewed the CMCC Foundation, and within the scope of the 2014-2020 cycle of cohesion policy, two projects were financed that had the foundation as a beneficiary. The first, totalling nearly €5 million, was financed by the Development and Cohesion Fund (DCF) within the scope of the PUGLIA PACT, aimed at creating the national facility for climate change data, i.e. the head office of the CMCC in Lecce. The second, with a value of roughly €6 million, ensured the expansion, modernization and enhancement of the JUNO supercomputer centre (ERDF ROP ESF PUGLIA). The answers were provided by Mauro Buonocore, head of media and communications for the CMCC Foundation.
CONSTRUCTION OF THE NATIONAL FACILITY FOR CLIMATE CHANGE DATA – CMCC FOUNDATION
Public cost monitored €4,994,665.41
Programme PUGLIA PACT
Programming cycle 2014-2020
Project progress 100%
What is the CMCC Foundation’s new facility in Lecce and why is it important in order to effectively coordinate and carry out the centre’s research into climate change?
The CMCC Foundation is a multidisciplinary research centre that conducts studies and creates models of the climate and its interaction with society and with the environment, so as to provide reliable, timely and rigorous results, to promote sustainable development, to protect the environment, and to develop policies of adaptation and mitigation, within the context of climate change, based on scientific knowledge. In the pursuit of its objectives, the CMCC Foundation promotes and conducts general and applied scientific research and develops technologically innovative services in the various fields on which climate change has an impact, while also facilitating partnerships between universities, national and international research institutes, local authorities, and industry segments.
More specifically, the CMCC Foundation works to promote the integration and convergence of the multidisciplinary capabilities needed to analyse issues related to the climate sciences, using high-resolution simulations and developing models of the atmosphere, of the oceans, of the earth’s surface, of underground aquifers, and of environmental and socioeconomic impacts.
In other words, the core of the CMCC’s research is the interaction between climate systems and social, economic and environmental systems. This is an area of research that represents one of the most advanced challenges of our time, the results of which are determinant to the generation of the scientific knowledge that lays the groundwork for decision-making processes locally and globally, in both the public and private sectors. This scientific output and its consequent application also require the sort of computing power that enables the production of models that provide very high levels of detail and reliability. The construction of the CMCC’s new headquarters has made it possible to host the supercomputing infrastructure in a single place, as it needs adequate space and technology, as well as a research staff that is able to use the infrastructure and the international network of which it is a part to produce advanced scientific knowledge on an issue that is at the frontier of intersecting science and society.
What support did cohesion policy provide in executing the investment?
Within the scope of the Development and Cohesion Fund, and with the 2014-2020 Pact for the Development of the Puglia Region, the CMCC Foundation was selected to receive approximately €5 million for the purpose of constructing a new head office in the form of the national facility for climate change data. These funds were therefore used to purchase and redevelop the property that now hosts the foundation’s new headquarters, including the new supercomputing infrastructure. A 3,300 square-meter polyvalent space is used by the multidisciplinary task force of experts in oceanography and marine modelling, from the world’s oceans down to the regional scale (the Mediterranean and Black Seas) and coastlines, experts in advanced computing, data science, machine learning and artificial intelligence, and experts in the impact of climate change on the earth’s ecosystems and on agriculture and forestry. Out of this human capital, and in collaboration with more than a hundred people at the other offices of the CMCC Foundation and with dozens of other centres nationally and internationally, comes the development of studies into the interaction between climate, the environment, the economy and society, research that supports the creation of policies to plan for a future that brings adequate answers to the challenges of climate change.
These spaces are of benefit to the entire community and are home to initiatives aimed at engaging the public in scientific research and in the dissemination of its output. Debates, international research meetings, and other public events animate the headquarters and provide a calendar of cultural events for the community as a whole with the goal of helping to develop public awareness of the primary challenges for the future. Within the facility there is also adequate space for the initiatives with which the CMCC promotes higher education in climate change, including working with partner universities to organize master’s and post-graduate programmes.
JUNO – EXPANSION, MODERNIZATION AND ENHANCEMENT OF THE SUPERCOMPUTING CENTRE
Public cost monitored €5,982,885.31
Programme ERDF ROP ESF PUGLIA
Programming cycle 2014-2020
Project progress 68%
What is Juno? What purpose does it serve? Why was it necessary to expand the supercomputing centre?
The CMCC Supercomputing Centre in Lecce, which has been operational since 2008, is the largest computing facility in Italy – and among the most advanced in Europe – dedicated exclusively to climate change research and the interaction of climate change with society and the economy. The fulcrum of the technological infrastructure that enables the CMCC to create and develop scenarios and models on our climate future, the Supercomputing Centre has been enhanced both in terms of the computing facility and its data storage systems, which make it possible to manage and store enormous quantities of climate data produced by the centre’s research and other operations over the medium to long term.
Juno is the name given to the new supercomputer based on the latest generation of Intel processors (the third-generation scalable Intel Xeon processor codenamed “Ice Lake”) and the latest generation of the NVIDIA GPU (NVIDIA Ampere architecture).
Juno joins the pre-existing Zeus to bring the total computing power of the CMCC, in terms of theoretical peak performance, to 2,400 trillion floating-point operations per second (TFLOPS). The supercomputing centre also includes 32 petabytes of storage capacity and 40 petabytes of tape library.
This strengthening of the supercomputing infrastructure is in response to multiple needs, including that of having both the computing power needed to meet the most advanced challenges faced by the scientific community and the storage capacity for the data generated. Another aspect also concerns the issue of energy, as the modernized infrastructure also makes it possible to use more efficient tools in terms of energy consumption and power systems that are increasingly in line with the sustainable development goals.
What support has cohesion policy provided?
Within the scope of the National Research Plan (NRP), the national and regional strategic research infrastructures have been identified. These were financed by European cohesion funds by way of the regional operational programmes (ROPs).
In particular, the CMCC’s new JUNO data centre was selected by the Region of Puglia as a research infrastructure of strategic importance and financed under Action 1.7 – Actions to Support Regional Research Infrastructure within Axis I of the 2014-2020 ERDF ESF OP – Research, Technological Development and Innovation. The financing agreement, for a total of approximately €6 million, was signed on 18 October 2019. The data centre was completed and inspected in October 2022. The financing process with the Region of Puglia began with Unified Programming Office and with the Authority for Program Implementation and continued, as the project was executed, with the Department for Innovation and Development.
We would like to thank the CMCC Foundation for providing the photos.