Dubai-based digital assets infrastructure company Hodler Investments and Chinese clean energy company GCL Group (Golden Concord Group) have agreed to jointly invest in an off-grid energy infrastructure project in Ethiopia to power data centres that support high-demand applications, including Artificial Intelligence (AI) and blockchain.
The project will leverage GCL’s natural gas concessions in Ethiopia, allowing the energy group to monetise gas currently stranded due to a lack of export infrastructure, according to Hodler Investments’ Managing Director Mohamed El Masri.
“We will be formalising the co-investment structure not later than the end of the year,” El Masri told Zawya Projects on the sidelines of ADIPEC 2024 event in Abu Dhabi on Wednesday.
Ethiopia’s affordable renewable energy and supportive regulations have made it a hub for data-intensive technologies such as Bitcoin mining, data mining, and data centres, according to the U.S. International Trade Administration (ITA). An industry source told Zawya Projects that the country is currently home to around 500 megawatts (MW) of active Bitcoin mining operations.
In April 2024, GCL signed two Petroleum Production Sharing Agreements (PPSA) with the Ethiopian government to develop gas resources in the Ogaden Basin. GCL’s blocks are estimated to hold 2P reserves of nearly 200 billion cubic metres (BCM) of natural gas and 46 million tonnes of oil.
The distributed energy infrastructure project will utilise Hodler’s digital energy platform, PermianChain, which seeks to optimise wasted energy resources by connecting computing end users, data centre operators, energy suppliers (like GCL) and investors.
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