en.Wedoany.com Reported - The SINES Data Campus is a major data center development project in Europe, expected to have over 1.2GW of computing capacity upon completion by 2030. The campus is designed to operate entirely on renewable energy and utilize seawater for all cooling needs. Recently, Nscale invested €695 million in the project, collaborating with Start Campus and Microsoft.
The project is developed, operated, and managed by Start Campus, a company founded in Lisbon in 2020. The campus is located in the coastal town of Sines in Portugal's Alentejo region, utilizing a repurposed industrial area adjacent to a recently decommissioned coal-fired power plant owned by Energias de Portugal (EDP). Key advantages of the site include existing seawater intake basins and direct connections to international submarine cables.
Campus planning has progressed rapidly, with the Portuguese government designating it a project of national interest in March 2021. The first phase of construction began in April 2022, and the first data center, SIN01, became operational by the end of 2024. That same year, Eurostat reported that 87.5% of Portugal's electricity came from renewable sources, enhancing the project's low-carbon feasibility. Start Campus CEO Robert Dunn stated in 2025 that the company is committed to laying the foundation for the next generation of sustainable, AI-ready digital infrastructure, emphasizing that managing power efficiently, intelligently, and sustainably is key.
The campus's most notable feature is its water usage. SIN01 is the world's first AI data center to use seawater as its primary cooling system, directly drawing Atlantic seawater and returning it with a temperature increase of only 1 degree Celsius. This is made possible by its location, repurposing existing pipeline infrastructure previously used to cool the power station. This system eliminates freshwater consumption for the data center, earning the campus a zero water usage effectiveness rating and achieving a design power usage effectiveness (PUE) of 1.1.
According to the United Nations (UN), data centers consumed approximately 448 TWh of electricity last year—more than all but 10 countries globally—putting pressure on the industry to justify its resource demands. The SINES Data Campus offers a model for sustainable, low-impact computing. Nscale CEO and founder Josh Payne stated that the expanded deployment in Sines, Portugal, creates one of Europe's most advanced high-density AI infrastructure environments and represents one of the largest AI infrastructure investments in Portugal's history, as well as one of the most significant in the EU, reflecting the surging demand they see for Nscale's services. Robert Dunn noted that maintaining this level of sustainability requires daily attention to ensure operations are as sustainable as possible.
