Deutsche Telekom has signed a power purchase agreement (PPA) to procure wind energy in Romania.

The telco’s local units T-Mobile Czech Republic, Slovak Telekom, and CE Colo Czech Republic have signed cross-border virtual Power Purchase Agreements (vPPAs) with Actis-backed Rezolv Energy.

The vPPAs will see the three firms buy 100GWh of clean power per year for 12 years. T-Mobile Czech Republic has secured 50GWh per year, Slovak Telekom 40GWh per year, and CE Colo Czech Republic 10GWh per year.

The three companies will initially procure the output of the 461MW VIFOR wind farm, which has been developed by Rezolv and Low Carbon in Buzău County, Romania.

Pavel Hadrbolec, CFO at T-Mobile Czech Republic and Slovak Telekom, said: “We are proud to became an enabler of a new renewable energy site and became a frontrunner in this area. This is a further step in our decarbonization journey. The deal also brings us relevant risk diversification to our energy procurement strategy and energy prices hedging.”

Phase one of the VIFOR project will install 192MW in capacity with planned expansion to 461MW in Phase 2. Construction is scheduled to be completed within 18 months, with VIFOR coming onstream before the end of 2025. In the second phase, a further 700GWh per year will be available for corporate buyers.

Alastair Hammond, CEO at Rezolv Energy, added: “These are the first cross-border virtual PPAs that have been signed by Czech or Slovak companies, and they are an important signal to other businesses in these two countries. They do not need to wait for renewable energy capacity to start coming onstream in volume in their home market.”

Rezolv Energy was launched by infrastructure investor Actis in 2022, and has more than 2GW of capacity in development across South Eastern Europe. As well as the VIFOR wind farm, projects include the 1,044MW Dama Solar farm in western Romania which will be the largest solar plant in Europe once built, as well as the 600MW Dunarea East & West Wind Farms in Romania’s Constanța County, and the 229MW St. George solar project in north-eastern Bulgaria.

Jaroslava Korpanec, partner, head of Central and Eastern Europe, energy infrastructure at Actis, said: “Actis launched Rezolv Energy to deliver a new era of clean, sustainable energy in Central and Southeastern Europe. This vPPA demonstrates how Rezolv is leading the CEE market.”

Rezolv recently secured finance loan facilities of up to €291 million ($312m) to support the phase one construction from a consortium of eight lenders led by Erste Group, UniCredit Group, and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, as well as the International Finance Corporation (IFC), Intesa Sanpaolo Group, OTP Bank, Raiffeisen Bank International AG, and Garanti BBVA Romania.

Deutsche Telekom has previously signed a 150MW wind PPA with Statkraft and a 100MW wind PPA with EnBW, both in Germany. Its Croatian unit Hrvatski Telekom has previously signed another wind PPA with Liburana doo. T-Mobile Poland has also signed a 98MW PPA with GreenVolt.

CE Colo was established through the acquisition of Sitel Data Center (SDC) in January 2011; the company owns and operates a 10MW data center in Prague.