“Sustainability, operational performance and technological development need to be considered together.” This is the main lesson Patrícia Bugáňová, Project Manager at ELI ERIC, draws from ELI’s recent work on energy efficiency, a topic explored by Work Package 8 of ERIC Forum 2 and presented at the workshop How ERICs and EIROforum are contributing to the green and digital transition. ELI ERIC’s high-power lasers rely on cleanrooms, cooling and ventilation systems that must keep conditions extremely stable, which makes reducing their environmental impact a particular challenge. Even so, ELI Beamlines drastically reduced its heat consumption between 2022 and 2023. In addition, ELI ERIC is testing open-source tools for building management developed within FlexRICAN, a Horizon Europe project in which three ESFRI infrastructures, three academic institutions and two industrial partners work on making large research infrastructures more energy-flexible. Read the interview to find out more.
What is ELI ERIC and what kind of science does it make possible?
ELI is a European user facility that provides scientists with access to some of the most advanced high-power laser technology in the world. Our ultra-intense and ultra-short laser pulses allow researchers to study processes that are extremely difficult, or even impossible, to investigate using conventional technologies.
The research enabled by ELI covers areas such as laser physics, particle acceleration, nuclear physics, materials science and biomedicine.
What is perhaps less visible is the infrastructure needed to operate these experiments. Behind the laser systems there are cleanrooms, cooling systems, HVAC, power supply and other supporting technologies that have to operate very reliably and maintain highly stable conditions. This is also why sustainability at ELI is a particularly interesting challenge: we need to reduce the environmental impact of the infrastructure without compromising the quality and stability required for the science.
Why has ELI chosen to implement an Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) framework? What does it involve for an organisation spread across several countries?
For us, ESG is about recognising that ELI’s impact does not end with the research we enable. As a user facility, our main role is to give scientists access to unique laser technologies and support research that can benefit science and society. But we also need to look at how we operate as an organisation: our environmental footprint, how we work with our people and stakeholders, our relationship with local communities and the way we are governed.
ELI is not legally required to implement an ESG framework, so this is a voluntary decision. We see it as an opportunity to look at the organisation more systematically and to make sure that our development reflects the direction in which Europe is moving. Sustainability is increasingly important in research policy, funding and international cooperation, and we want ELI to be part of that conversation rather than wait until new requirements become mandatory.
The challenge is that ELI operates across different countries and facilities, with different operational contexts, data sources and local requirements. We therefore need a shared direction and common principles at the ELI ERIC level, while allowing ELI Beamlines and ELI ALPS to reflect their own operational realities. In practice, this means agreeing on common priorities and responsibilities, and then translating them into actions that work at facility level while still contributing to a coherent approach across ELI.
Between 2022 and 2023, ELI Beamlines cut its heat consumption by around half. How did you achieve that, while keeping the very stable conditions that lasers and cleanrooms require?
The reduction was initially driven by the energy crisis in 2022 and its impact on the operating budget. We therefore took a close look at how the facility was operated and which parameters could be adjusted. Some of the initial measures involved a higher level of operational risk and were introduced as controlled, temporary steps. For a certain period, we reduced humidification and adjusted the operation of the cooling and air-handling systems, while closely monitoring the impact on the facility and the experiments. This helped us understand the actual operating limits and provided a basis for the technical improvements that followed.
We then introduced a number of technical measures, including a new chiller and compressor cooling system, improvements to the heat exchanger serving the air-handling system, an additional pre-cooling stage and the implementation of a building management system. These measures allowed us to return to stable operating conditions while maintaining the energy savings achieved through the initial optimisation.
Another important factor was the changing climate. Some of the original design parameters for the ventilation and cooling systems were based on climatic conditions that are no longer representative of current summers. This made it necessary to revisit and optimise the way the systems were designed and operated. The challenge was to turn short-term energy-saving measures into a stable, technically sound and long-term operating solution. Today, ELI Beamlines combines reliable conditions for research with significantly more efficient operation.
On the digital side, you are using new tools to run your facilities more efficiently. Which ones, and what have you learned so far?
Digitalisation is becoming an important part of how we operate and control our facilities. At ELI, we found that the existing control setup did not give us sufficient insight into how the facility was operating, or enough flexibility to optimise and further develop the control strategy. We needed a solution that would help us understand the operation better, respond more quickly to changing conditions and maintain stable conditions for research while improving efficiency.
As part of the Horizon Europe FlexRICAN project, we therefore developed and implemented open-source function blocks for BMS. We installed and tested the prototype at ELI, where it gives us much greater insight into the operation of the building and allows us to define the control logic ourselves. For example, we can specify how the systems should respond to particular operating or weather conditions, rather than relying only on a generic, pre-defined solution. This has helped us improve the operation of the facility, reduce disruptions and lower energy consumption. The tools will be made freely available as an open-source output of FlexRICAN, so they can also be adapted for use in other research infrastructures and buildings.
We see this as the next stage of development. The current rule-based approach gives us a clear understanding of what the system is doing and why. We are now exploring how artificial intelligence and machine learning could help optimise the control logic further by looking at the facility as a whole and analysing a much wider range of variables and interactions, including relationships that may not be immediately obvious to us. An initial proof of concept has already shown promising results in improving temperature stability and system efficiency.
One important lesson so far is that digitalisation is a gradual process. It starts with reliable data and a clear understanding of the facility, then moves towards more advanced tools that can identify patterns, support better decisions and reveal new opportunities for optimisation. For us, the goal is to combine transparent and controllable building management with more advanced data-driven solutions, so that the facility can operate more efficiently without compromising the conditions required for research.
Through the FlexRICAN project, ELI is developing tools that other facilities can reuse. What can other research infrastructures learn from your experience, and what comes next?
I think the main lesson for other research infrastructures is that sustainability is a voluntary commitment, but it requires active engagement if it is to have a real impact. At ELI, we see sustainability as an important area of development, not just as a reporting requirement. We are trying to look at the facility as a whole system, bringing together the building, its energy use, technical systems, digital tools, operational requirements and the effects of climate change.
This is also what makes the approach different from focusing on one individual technology or one isolated measure. The aim is to understand how the different parts of the system interact and then translate that understanding into practical improvements. For example, building management and control systems provide a way to apply this broader approach in day-to-day operation: they help us respond to changing conditions, maintain the stability required for research and improve energy efficiency at the same time. FlexRICAN is supporting this approach by combining technological development with a broader understanding of energy use, flexibility, sustainability and climate-related challenges.
The next step is to further develop and validate the tools created through FlexRICAN and make them available for wider use. We also see strong potential for continued cooperation with other research infrastructures and project partners, because no single facility can address these challenges in isolation. Our experience at ELI has shown that sustainability, operational performance and technological development need to be considered together. This is the direction in which we see strong potential for ELI and for the wider research-infrastructure community.
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