Telekom Romania director slams Orange for too-little, too-late sustainability initiative

Nicolas Mahler, financial director of Telekom Romania, recently criticized Orange for its plan to set up 300 PV sites over the next four years, suggesting that the latter could have done more and much sooner to bring down its electricity consumption.

“Great to see that Orange Romania is starting to jump on the ‘sustainability train,’ by putting solar panels on their sites. They plan (!) to have 300 sites with this till 2024,” said Mahler in a post on LinkedIn. “We have 450 sites equipped with solar panels […] although we are a much smaller operator,” he added.

Orange Romania is the leader of the local telecom market and has recently launched a 4-year program to increase the share of green energy used in its operations. The first phase of the initiative runs until 2024 and aims to equip 300 sites and 4 communication and data centers in the Orange network with solar panels. The number of sites is expected to continue to increase in the second phase, which will last until 2026.

The first communication center included in the program is located in Constanța. 216 solar panels with a total power of 118kWp have been installed on the roof of the center and were recently put into operation. The PV system is expected to lower the daytime hourly consumption of energy of the center by 80%.

“The center in Constanța is the beginning of an important program that will allow us to have a high-performance, but also more energy-efficient network. Other measures to reduce energy consumption are added to this initiative, such as increasing the temperature point at which the climate systems operate in our technical locations, the progressive migration of all climate installations in the network to ‘free cooling’ technology, the activation of all consumption reduction mechanisms in the radio network, the decommissioning of some old technologies and equipment, the use of LED lighting solutions and the automation of lighting operation in human presence,” said Marius Maican, Chief Technology Officer of Orange Romania, in a press release.

Orange will focus on the part of its network located in the south of Romania for the installation of new PV systems. Each site will host 12 solar panels.

(Photo source: Nicolas Mahler on Twitter)