Elisa started a long-term partnership with Sunly City to install solar parks next to its’ cellular towers to increase green energy consumption. A total of 10 cell sites across Estonia will be equipped with solar parks as part of the pilot project.
“Being a responsible company, one of Elisa’s main directions in the field of sustainability is green energy and energy efficiency. Elisa already has been using electricity purchased from 100% renewable energy sources for the operation of its mobile base stations, through which we offer services to customers in our network. Soon we are going to take it a step further and introduce solar parks at the base stations to reduce rising costs and further increase the company’s contribution to green energy. The parks will be built together with Sunly City and will be leased with full service. In this way, we can easily consume affordable and environmentally friendly solar electricity,” announced Toomas Polli, Elisa’s CTO.
According to Sunly City Sales Manager, Taavi Velleste, it is great to see the increasingly energy-intensive telecommunications sector is actively looking for ways to become greener, not only on paper, but in real life. “Electricity produced from solar energy for local consumption is undoubtedly one of the best ways to make your electricity consumption environmentally-friendly during sunny hours. In Elisa’s project, we are responsible for the construction, production, monitoring and equipment maintenance, and we will bring hassle-free green energy to Elisa,” commented Velleste.
Currently, solar parks are being designed for the first 10 cell towers, with panels projected to start producing already this autumn. In total, most of Elisa’s cellular towers across Estonia are planned to be equipped with solar parks.
Already today, Elisa only uses electricity purchased from renewable energy sources for the operation of its’ base stations. The energy sources include wind, water, biogas and biomass, and all the power plants producing renewable energy are located in Estonia. In recognition of this choice, Elisa has already been issued Green Choice certificates since 2019, which are ensured by Pan-European transparent system of certificates of origin.