Tuesday 8 September, 2026
Mobile network operators face unique challenges in purchasing and generating renewable electricity. Mobile towers are highly distributed, have relatively low power demand per site, and urban sites have l imited space for on-site renewable generation. This makes renewable energy procurement more complex than for large, centralised energy users like data centres and factories.
Governments in three Asia-Pacific markets show how targeted policy reforms – including lowering demand and voltage thresholds, enabling multi-site aggregation, and resolving contra accounting barriers – can support access for mobile operators and tower companies in the region.
In the Philippines, retail choice rules restricted direct renewable procurement to large, single-meter connections. To allow access to distributed loads such as mobile towers, the Energy Regulatory Commission introduced the Retail Aggregation Program (RAP) in 2022, allowing operators to pool multiple sites under one contract. In 2026, eligibility thresholds were reduced from 500 kW to 100 kW. Globe Telecom is using RAP to shift more than 3000 sites to renewables by 2028.
In Japan, energy regulators shifted to a Feed-in Premium scheme in 2022 to enable virtual power purchase agreements (PPAs) and clarified of accounting rules in 2025. As a result, corporate PPAs grew five-fold between 2022 and 2025. Leveraging these mechanisms, SoftBank sourced more than 90% renewable electricity for its base stations in 2024.
In Australia, the energy regulator launched its Guarantee of Origin scheme in late 2025, introducing hourly-matched REGO certificates. Mobile operators have significantly increased their renewables share over the past three years, signing multi-year PPAs to cover a significant share of their electricity consumption.
