Mar 17, 2026 | Posted by Abdul-Rahman Oladimeji
Renewable energy company Sunly has applied for planning permission to develop a 180MW AI data center near the village of Risti in Lääne-Nigula municipality, Estonia. If approved, the facility would become the country’s largest single electricity consumer and the biggest data center of its kind in the Baltic region.
The data center will cost Sunly €1.7 billion ($1.94bn) to construct, Sunly’s CEO, Prits Lepaseps, told the Lääne Elu newspaper. DCD has approached the firm for comment.
"We want to create the conditions for the necessary infrastructure to be created in Estonia for the implementation of artificial intelligence,” said Lepaseps. “The location of Risti allows for the connection of local renewable energy production and large-scale electricity consumption. This will provide certainty for our electricity production and create new technological capabilities for Estonia.”
Founded in 2019, Sunly operates around 1GW of renewable energy capacity from solar and wind projects across Estonia, Latvia, and Poland.
The company said construction of the Risti data center would create around 150 local jobs and is expected to be powered by a nearby solar park it is developing. Sunly also plans to build a wind farm and a battery energy storage system (BESS) in the surrounding area. According to Lääne-Nigula Municipality, the planning process for the project could take up to eight months.
The news followed Sunly’s announcement in September that a new BESS will be built at the 45MW solar park in neighboring Põhja-Pärnumaa municipality, which it operates with Finnish for estry management company Metsagrupp.
