Portuguese telco Oni has signed a renewable contract agreement with Acciona Energia.
The energy company will provider Oni with 100 percent renewable energy for its internal consumption and data centers in Lisbon and Porto. Acciona Energia operates renewable projects totaling 11GW – including more than 500 projects across Portugal and Spain – and aims to reach 20GW by 2025.
"The environment is one of our company's priorities. The announcement that our data centers in Portugal will now be powered by 100 percent renewable energy is another step towards our goal of reducing our ecological footprint as much as possible," says Nuno Saraiva, CEO of ONI.
The agreement between Oni and Acciona Energia will last for five years and will allow, through blockchain technology, certificates with 100 percent renewable origin guarantees to be issued, issued by EEGO (Entity Issuing Guarantees of Origin).
The companies said the sources of renewable energy will be ensured via blockchain technology; Acciona Energía will use GREENCHAIN to provide this service and allowing clients to trace the renewable origin of the electricity used by their infrastructures that are hosted in Oni’s data centers.
Neither company makes a note of the energy requirements and potential environmental impact of compute-intensive blockchain applications.
Spanish cloud company Gigas acquired Oni from MásMóvil in November 2020 for €40 million ($45m). Gigas operates a total of eight data centers across Spain, Portugal, Colombia, Chile, the US, and Ireland. It said its Spanish operations were already powered by renewable energy.
“Caring for the environment is one of our company’s priorities. The announcement that our data centers in Spain and Portugal are now powered by green energy is another step towards our goal of reducing our carbon footprint as much as possible,” said Diego Cabezudo, CEO and Gigas co-founder. “It is a responsibility that we must be mindful of as we are a major player in one of the most energy-intensive industries, IT.”
A version of this story appeared on our Spanish edition.
