Energy & Sustainability

Ooredoo, Qatar’s leading ICT provider, and the Gulf Organisation for Research & Development (GORD), a research group with a strong emphasis on sustainability, have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU).

Underlining the continuing government push not only to make Malaysia an attractive home for data centres but for renewable energy to power those data stations is a recent announcement of a 250MW solar initiative positioned to supply AI data centres in Malaysia.

Veon-owned digital telco Kyivstar says it has made first investment in renewable energy by buying solar power company Sunvin 11, which owns a 12.9-MW solar plant in the Zhytomyr region of Ukraine.

Two new renewable energy agreements involving Malaysia are a reminder of the growing power demands of data centres and of date centre owners’ need to find cleaner, cheaper and more demand-responsive ways to meet them.

Edotco Bangladesh, an integrated telecommunications infrastructure services provider, has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Telephone Shilpa Sangstha (TSS), a state-owned enterprise under the country's Posts and Telecommunications Division.

Reported last week but only recently receiving wider coverage is the news that a Brazilian company – Rio de Janeiro-based Sollar Machine – has announced an investment of about US$9 million to build a data centre in Paraguay that will operate independently of the national power grid.

Operator MTN Zambia and tech company Huawei have jointly launched what is claimed to be the world’s first AI-powered adaptive power backup solution for emergency resilient networks.

Bahrain-headquartered technology group Beyon has announced the establishment of its second fully green solar-powered data centre with the successful completion of Phase 3 of the Beyon Solar Park developed in partnership with solar solutions company Almoayyed Solar.

Two MoUs announced in the past week underline the ongoing focus of many major corporations in telecommunications and energy supply on pursuing – or being seen to pursue – sustainable strategies, notably in the area of energy efficiency.

A new investigative report claims to document ways in which a group of large US brokers appear to be facilitating what is estimated to be a billion-dollar trade in exporting electronic waste to developing countries.

AdventEnergy, the retail electricity supply arm of Aboitiz Power Corporation, a power company in the Philippines that champions the use of both renewable and non-renewable energy sources, has entered into a strategic partnership with Philippines telecommunications company DITO Telecommunity by providing electricity to 1,642 of its cell towers.

Botswana and Nigeria are in the data centre news after recent announcements signalling plans to develop facilities in both countries powered, in part, by renewable energy.

A previously little-known company called X8 Cloud Infrastructure has announced plans to build an artificial intelligence and cloud services data centre complex in Paraguay, leveraging hydroelectric power.

Princeton Digital Group (PDG), a leading Asia Pacific data centre provider, has announced a partnership with clean energy intelligence platform Flexidao and Tata Power Renewable Energy Limited (TPREL), one of India’s largest renewable energy companies, to pioneer the implementation of time-matched, carbon-free energy (CFE) consumption at its 150MW MU1 data centre in Mumbai.

South African telco Vodacom announced on Wednesday that its virtual wheeling solution is now live, enabling it to purchase renewable energy for its countrywide operations more efficiently and on a broader scale.

We’ve been reporting recently on a less than favourable effect of data centre development in Mexico recently: the massive use of water by data centres in areas already suffering shortages.

Two Malaysian companies, clean energy solutions provider Gentari, the renewable energy arm of Malaysian oil and gas company Petronas, and construction and engineering company Gamuda, through its energy arm Gamuda Energy, have entered into a data centre-focused energy collaboration.

Operator and global technology group e& UAE has deployed what is described as the Gulf Cooperation Council’s (GCC’s) first dual band 64T64R MetaAAU (active antenna unit), an advanced radio unit from technology vendor Huawei, on its live 5G network, a new technology that not only improves how 5G networks perform but also uses less energy and reduces the amount of equipment needed.

Vi Business, the enterprise arm of India’s Vodafone Idea, said on Wednesday it plans to deploy 12 million smart meters nationwide within the next three years in a bid to help transform India’s energy infrastructure.

Malaysian clean energy solutions provider Gentari and cloud services giant Amazon Web Services (AWS) have signed a power purchase agreement (PPA) for an 80MW wind power project in Tamil Nadu, India, a state on the south-eastern coast of the Indian peninsula.

Nxtra by Airtel, a data centre-focused subsidiary of Indian technology giant Bharti Airtel Limited, and Indian renewable energy transition company AMPIN Energy Transition say they have strengthened their partnership.

Saudi Electric Company – National Grid, the entity responsible for the transmission of power to different categories of customers in all locations in Saudi Arabia, has awarded Wipro, an AI-powered technology services and consulting company, a multi-year strategic contract involving smart metering.

Africa-headquartered technology company Liquid Intelligent Technologies has announced a strategic partnership with DropByDrop Water Systems, a global provider of smart water technologies, to drive smart water management across Kenya.

Two recently announced projects in Indonesia and Morocco underline the continuing drive to power data centres in a sustainable manner.

At the AI for Good Global Summit 2025 in Geneva, ZTE’s Chief Development Officer (CDO) Cui Li delivered a speech at a workshop themed “Navigating the Intersect of AI, Environment and Energy for a Sustainable Future".

Telecoms infrastructure provider Edotco Bangladesh said on Monday it has signed an MoU with clean mobility and energy firm Tiger New Energy to deploy sustainable power systems for both telecom towers and electric vehicles across Bangladesh.

Nigerian regulator the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) and the Nigerian Rural Electrification Agency (REA) have launched a joint initiative to reduce the estimated US$350 million that telecom operators in Nigeria spend annually on diesel.

Nokia announced on Monday that Indonesian telco Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison has deployed its energy efficiency solution to reduce energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions across Indosat’s Nokia-supplied RANs.

It’s not unusual to hear of operators using renewable energy, but in Kenya Sistema.bio, a biogas and regenerative agriculture platform, and operator Safaricom appear to be donating it to farmers.

After new power tariffs were put in place on Tuesday, operators of data centres in Malaysia have apparently expressed concerns that they are much higher than were expected.

As AI in particular drives more technology development, including data centre rollout in emerging markets, a new report is suggesting that some of the world’s best-known tech giants are emitting more while presenting climate targets that may be, at the very least, optimistic.

Mobile operators globally recorded a 8% drop in operational carbon emissions from 2019 to 2023 despite growth in connections and data traffic, But while that trend is set to continue, more needs to be done – especially in developing countries, and even more so within supply chains globally – to keep the global mobile sector’s net-zero goals on track, according to a new GSMA report.

In its recently released Sustainability Report 2024, ZTE outlines how it aims to integrate sustainable development with its corporate strategies in order to strengthen its competitiveness in the sector.