## 1 Introduction
When talking about space technologies for clean energy generation, it is necessary to look at EO satellites for maximizing renewable energy production [21]. Satellites for EO provide a distinctive basis of data for anyone designing, implementing or assessing sustainable development initiatives. They can assist in reconstructing a sequence of occurrences by displaying a series of pictures over the span of a moment. High-resolution pictures can be used during a particular timeframe to investigate extremely focused phenomenon with a limited range of sight. In portraying national events that may involve more systemic and repeated compilation, low precision photography is easier. Copernicus is the European Union (EU) EO and monitoring program, which looks to our planet and its environment for the ultimate benefit of all European citizens. It aims at providing accurate and easily accessible data to improve environment management and understanding of climate change effects [22]. Copernicus primarily draws on data collected from EO satellites, but it also depends on a large amount of information gathered in situ (meaning on-site or local) measurement systems made available by the Member States of the EU to the programme. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{l l} \hline \hline
**SDG Topic** & **Actual or Possible Contribution of Space** \\ \hline SDG 12: Responsible consumption and production & EO data for optimized supply management, energy management, sat/nav for logistics management in production \\ \hline SDG 13: Climate Action & EO data key for climate change monitoring and definition of mitigation strategies \\ \hline SDG 14: Life below Water & EO data key for monitoring the health of oceans and other water systems, for fisheries management and policing \\ \hline SDG 15: Life on Land & EO data for bio-diversity monitoring, pollution monitoring, land use management and policing \\ \hline SDG 16: Peace Justice and Strong Institutions & Telecoms empower civil society by connecting to the information society, e-voting enabled by telecoms, legal evidence, treaty compliance monitoring, security management through EO systems \\ \hline SDG 17: Partnerships & Space community is a part of an international fabric of partnerships. Possibilities of reinforcement of links with development actors \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 1: _Cont._In Figure 1, the Sentinel family is displayed, which constitutes the space segment of the Copernicus program. Satellite programs for collecting climate data and, in general, for Earth monitoring are among the key sustainable development initiatives for SDGs, but this is not the end of the process: telemetry data properly post-processed are inserted in databases in order to allow very accurate analysis for certain type of project. For this scope, many software and tools have been developed with user-friendly interfaces, going from a basic-user level (a family that wants a domestic photovoltaic installation) to an advanced-user level (engineers working for investors in power plants or smart building programs). RETScreen, being the oldest tool conceived for exploiting databases of typical sets of data for Earth monitoring and consequently analyzing the feasibility of a power plant installation (traditional or renewable), has been adopted for describing how useful satellite missions are for renewable energy optimization in power plants, already existing or not [24]. The peculiarity of this study is to show how space-based research could produce significant enhancements to sustainability and, in particular, to renewable energy generation. Specifically, the novelty of this work comes from the emphasis given to one of the most innovative fields of study (i.e., space research) for finding solutions for our environment by trying to exploit already existing technologies to propose an innovative approach to clean energy generation. Our analyses show the results of two scenarios.