Sunly eyes €1.7B data centre to bring AI infrastructure to Estonia
Estonian renewables firm Sunly wants to build the Baltics’ largest data centre — and power it with its own solar.
The AI boom is global, and Estonia is among the most agile adopters of the technology — but now aims to catch up on the infrastructure part as well. This week, Estonian renewable energy company Sunly has submitted a planning application to build the largest data centre in the Baltic states, a €1.7B facility in Risti, Lääne-Nigula Municipality in western Estonia. The news has been reported by newspaper Lääne Elu.
Founded in 2019, Sunly is an independent energy producer headquartered in Tallinn, operating across the Baltics and Poland. The company has secured nearly €1B in funding from investors, including the EBRD and EIB, and has grown rapidly into one of the region’s most ambitious clean energy developers.
Sunly’s plan for an AI cluster
The proposed 180-megawatt-capacity facility would become Estonia’s largest electricity consumer and is expected to create more than 150 jobs. Sunly CEO Priit Lepasepp said the project aims to establish the infrastructure needed to run artificial intelligence domestically. He noted that Risti’s location makes it well-suited to link local renewable energy production directly to large-scale electricity consumption.
The site is no coincidence. Sunly is already developing a 244 MW solar park in Risti — set to become the largest photovoltaic facility in the Baltics — alongside plans for wind energy and battery storage at the same location. The data centre would serve as a major off-taker for that output, forming what Sunly describes as a hybrid energy park capable of covering most of its own power needs.
Sunly’s energy hub development lead Kaarel Aus noted that no data centre in the Baltic region currently runs or trains AI models, meaning user queries are processed abroad. The Risti facility would change that, handling both inference and model training locally.
If approved, Aus said the first phases could be operational as early as 2028, with construction proceeding in stages in line with client demand. The municipal planning process is expected to take up to eight months.
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