More service with less energy.
At Sooma, sustainability is an engineering matter: delivering more service with less energy, measuring what we consume and replacing paper processes with digital ones that carry the same legal value.
- NOS data centre, with targets validated by the SBTi
- Targets measured per unit of service
- Off-site backups on 100% renewable electricity
75.8%
Renewable electricity in Portugal
of the electricity generated in the country in 2025, according to APREN, using REN data
−90%
Target for 2030
target set by NOS, our data centre operator, for direct and electricity emissions, compared with 2019, validated by the SBTi
100%
Renewable for off-site backups
data centres in the European Union, with a PUE between 1.10 and 1.16
−20%
Sooma target for 2029
in energy and emissions per registered communication
Our approach
Efficiency per unit of service, with transparent accounting.
All our production infrastructure is hosted in a NOS data centre in Matosinhos, an operator with targets validated by the Science Based Targets initiative.
In 2026 we renewed the core of that infrastructure with next-generation servers, storage and networking. The choice was made with three things in mind at the same time.
Data security and sovereignty
Our own infrastructure, in Portugal, built on auditable open-source software.
Room to grow
Including Sooma Registered Mail, our electronic registered delivery service.
Energy efficiency
Fewer watts per unit of work and continuous measurement of consumption.
Transparency
Absolute consumption goes up. Intensity has to come down.
When we install new capacity, our absolute electricity consumption increases. That is why our targets are intensity targets (energy and emissions per unit of service delivered) and we publish how we measure them.
Where we are
The NOS data centre in Matosinhos.
Our systems run in the NOS data centre in Matosinhos. It is one of the main enterprise data centres in the north of Portugal, operated by NOS Sistemas.
The building has around 1,800 m² of technical floor space and was designed with redundancy equivalent to Tier III. It has electrical power over two independent paths (A+B), UPS systems, emergency generators and N+1 precision cooling. It has a direct fibre connection to the GigaPIX internet exchange in Porto and to the NOS national optical network.
Sharing a professional data centre is, in itself, an efficiency choice. Cooling, power distribution and physical security serve many customers at once, with an efficiency that an SME's own server room cannot match.
NOS climate commitments
NOS has published decarbonisation targets validated by the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) since 2021 and has answered the CDP climate questionnaire since 2020. It is also a signatory of the European Green Digital Coalition.
| NOS commitment | Target | Baseline |
|---|---|---|
| Direct and electricity emissions (scopes 1 and 2) | 90% less by 2030 | compared with 2019 |
| Value chain emissions (scope 3) | 30% less by 2030 | compared with 2019 |
| Renewable electricity | 100% by 2030 | 50% in 2024 |
| Carbon neutrality | 2040 |
Progress so far also includes the data centres. Between 2019 and 2024, NOS cut the energy used per unit of data traffic by 62%. In the data centres, upgrading cooling and lighting improved energy efficiency by around 30%, alongside server consolidation and virtualisation.
To reach 100% renewable electricity, NOS combines long-term contracts (PPAs), electricity with guarantees of origin and its own generation, including solar installations at technical sites and at one of its data centres. As a hosting customer, the emissions from the electricity our equipment uses fall as NOS makes progress along that path.
Equipment
Why it uses less per unit of work.
A few very dense, well-used machines use less energy per unit of service than many old, half-used ones. That principle guided the 2026 renewal.
Sooma's infrastructure is organised into compute and storage nodes. Each node is a complete unit: servers, storage, networking and metered power distribution, sized together. We grow by adding nodes as demand requires, instead of oversizing the infrastructure from the start.
| Component of each node | Role | Contribution to efficiency |
|---|---|---|
| 10 Dell PowerEdge R7725 servers, each with 2 AMD EPYC 9655 processors and 1 TB of memory | Compute for the email, DNS, hosting and trust platform services | 192 cores per server make it possible to consolidate workloads onto fewer machines; the Zen 5 generation delivers more performance per watt |
| IBM FlashSystem 9500 storage: the pinnacle of enterprise storage, designed for absolute resilience of critical data. | Storage and long-term preservation of digital evidence, with 1,397.04 TiB raw, roughly 2 petabytes of stored data per node | All-flash, with data compression in the module itself; fewer watts per terabyte and long-lived modules |
| Dell S5224-ON 25 GbE switches and SonicWall firewall | Networking and perimeter protection | Fewer devices and faster links for the same traffic |
| APC PDUs with per-circuit metering | Power distribution in the racks | They measure actual consumption, circuit by circuit: the basis of all our targets |
Compute: more work per watt
Each server has 2 AMD EPYC 9655 processors, with 96 cores each, on the Zen 5 architecture. In more than 100 independent Phoronix tests, this processor delivered around 1.4 times the performance of the equivalent previous-generation model, with average power draw only around 5% higher. In practice, roughly a third more work for every watt.
The biggest gain comes from consolidation. AMD estimates that replacing 2019 servers with servers of this generation delivers the same compute capacity with around 87% fewer servers and 71% less energy. This is a manufacturer estimate for a typical scenario. The mechanism, however, is the same in our case: with 192 cores and 1 TB of memory per server, each node concentrates on a few machines workloads that used to need many.
The servers have intelligent cooling and remote management (iDRAC), which reports power consumption in real time. This lets us match workload distribution to the energy actually used.
Storage: enterprise flash, compression and longevity
The storage in each node is an IBM FlashSystem 9500, the pinnacle of enterprise storage, designed for absolute resilience of critical data. Each node has 1,397.04 TiB raw, roughly 2 petabytes of stored data.
It is all-flash and uses IBM FlashCore modules, which compress data in the hardware itself. IBM guarantees data reduction of at least 2:1, meaning the same volume of information takes up half the physical capacity. IBM also guarantees a power ceiling per terabyte, which in some configurations is just 1.7 W/TB.
FlashCore modules use variable voltage technology that extends their working life. This matters for a service that must keep digital evidence for 7 to 10 years: fewer replacements mean less electronic waste.
Network and power: measuring at the point of use
Each node's network runs on Dell S5224-ON 25 GbE switches, with fewer devices and less cabling for the same traffic. The APC PDUs measure the consumption of each circuit. That metering is what lets us calculate the energy used for each communication processed, instead of relying on estimates.
Measuring to improve
Targets per unit of service, measured with real data.
We always compare against a baseline: the first half of 2027, the first full period of operation of the new infrastructure. The final measurement takes place in 2029.
| Indicator | Target for 2029 | How we measure |
|---|---|---|
| Energy use per registered communication | 20% less | kWh of the dedicated infrastructure (per-circuit metering at the PDUs) divided by the number of communications processed |
| Greenhouse gas emissions per communication | 20% less | Electricity consumption multiplied by the emission factor of the national electricity mix |
| Resource use per unit of service | 10% less | Paper, consumables and travel, reduced by digitising invoicing, contracting and support |
The energy and emissions targets rest on three levers: consolidating workloads on the new servers, all-flash storage with compression and continuous optimisation of the software platform.
We follow recognised references. Measurement and verification of savings follows the international IPMVP protocol. Operating practices follow the European Code of Conduct on Data Centre Energy Efficiency, maintained by the European Commission's Joint Research Centre. We also track PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness), the ratio between the data centre's total energy and the energy used by the IT equipment.
We publish absolute figures alongside intensities. A growing service uses more energy in total. What we want to show is that every communication, every mailbox and every site we host uses less and less.
Going paperless
The registered letter that needs no paper.
The biggest environmental contribution of the new infrastructure is not in the data centre, it is at our customers. Sooma Registered Mail, our electronic registered delivery service, replaces the paper registered letter with an electronic communication of equal evidential value.
The service follows the European eIDAS Regulation (Regulation (EU) No 910/2014, as amended by Regulation (EU) 2024/1183) and the ETSI standards for electronic registered delivery. A qualified electronic registered delivery has legal effect recognised in every Member State: proof of sending, of delivery and of the integrity of the content.
A physical registered letter requires paper, printing, an envelope, transport, sorting, door-to-door delivery and often a second delivery attempt and paper filing of the acknowledgement of receipt. The electronic version removes every one of these steps.
We estimate that each electronic registered communication cuts the carbon footprint by more than 90% compared with the equivalent registered letter. The calculation follows the European Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) methodology, set out in European Commission Recommendation 2013/179/EU.
The evidence for each delivery (proof of sending and receipt, timestamps, tamper-proof records) is preserved digitally on all-flash storage, instead of in paper files of receipts.
This impact avoided at our customers is not counted in our internal energy and emissions targets. We only count what we consume, so as not to mix our own gains with benefits to third parties.
Longevity
Using equipment well, and for longer.
The most effective way to reduce the footprint of a piece of equipment is to use it well and for longer. Three practices help us do that.
Auditable open-source software
Our platform runs predominantly on open-source software, hosted on our own infrastructure. We control the code and can optimise it for the hardware we have. We do not depend on licensing cycles that force us to replace equipment before the end of its working life.
Infrastructure as code
Servers and applications are configured automatically (Ansible). This lets us match capacity to real need and rebuild a service on another server in minutes, without keeping machines idle "just in case".
Equipment reuse
Equipment leaving production gets a second life in development and testing. The hardware security modules (HSMs) acquired in the ED-X project, the national data spaces Test Bed led by Sooma, are reused in the development and conformity testing of Sooma Registered Mail.
At end of life, data media are securely erased, following a procedure documented in our information security management system, before the equipment is sent for recovery.
Continuity
Backups on renewable electricity.
The off-site copy of our backups and the standby infrastructure for email are with an independent European provider, in data centres in the European Union powered by 100% renewable electricity.
We follow the 3-2-1 rule: three copies of the data, on two different media, one of them outside the main data centre. The off-site copy is encrypted before it leaves Sooma, and the key never leaves our hands. Data sovereignty is therefore preserved even on third-party infrastructure, always within the European Union.
That provider uses only electricity from renewable sources, with hydroelectric guarantees of origin. Its data centres are cooled with outside air for almost the whole year, with no water used for cooling, have a PUE between 1.10 and 1.16 and hold the European EMAS environmental certification.
The standby infrastructure for email waits in reserve and is only activated if there is an incident at the main data centre. Service continuity without permanently duplicating systems, and therefore without duplicating consumption.
Context
One of the most renewable electricity grids in Europe.
Operating from Portugal is already a climate advantage. In 2025, 75.8% of the electricity generated in the country came from renewable sources, according to APREN, based on REN data.
- 2025 mix: hydro 27.0%, wind 25.2% and solar PV 18.1% (including distributed generation).
- Carbon intensity: around 63 gCO2 per kWh generated in 2025.
- 100% renewable hours: the wholesale market closed with entirely renewable generation for 1,433 hours, the equivalent of around 60 days.
- Avoided emissions: renewable generation avoided around 10.8 million tonnes of CO2 over the year.
Portugal's National Energy and Climate Plan (PNEC 2030) targets 93% renewables in electricity consumption by 2030. Every additional percentage point reduces the emissions associated with our infrastructure, without us having to change anything in the data centre.
That is why our emissions target uses the emission factor of the national mix. So that the reduction we report is our own achievement, and not just the grid's, we also publish energy intensity (kWh per communication), which depends only on our efficiency.
Commitments
What we commit to by 2029.
We commit to meeting the intensity targets described in "Measuring to improve" and to reporting on them every year.
1
Publish every year
The electricity consumption of our infrastructure, in absolute terms and per unit of service, and the methodology used.
2
Data centres with climate targets
Production in data centres with validated climate targets and off-site backups in data centres powered by renewable electricity, always in the European Union.
3
Efficiency per unit of work
Choosing equipment for its efficiency, favouring consolidation, flash with compression and consumption metering at the point of use.
4
Extend working life
Reusing equipment that leaves production in development and testing, and securely erasing data media before recovery.
5
Go paperless
Our own processes, from invoicing to contracting and support, and helping our customers do the same, starting with the registered letter.
6
Audited efficiency
Building efficiency into the management system we are certifying to ISO 27001 and ISO 9001, so that these practices are audited and do not depend on goodwill.
Sources
Where the numbers come from.
- NOS, Carbon neutrality: targets for 2030 and 2040, renewable electricity and data centre efficiency.
- NOS, Climate change: CDP response since 2020.
- NOS, Sustainability: SBTi validation (2021) and European Green Digital Coalition.
- DCPulse, NOS Data Center NS, Matosinhos: building characteristics.
- APREN, Renewable electricity in review 2026: data on the Portuguese electricity system in 2025.
- AMD, 5th Gen EPYC launch: consolidation estimate (note 13 of the press release).
- Phoronix, AMD EPYC 9655 Benchmarks: performance and power draw compared with the previous generation.
- IBM, FlashSystem data storage sustainability: data reduction and W/TB guarantee.
Regulatory references: Regulation (EU) No 910/2014 (eIDAS) and Regulation (EU) 2024/1183; Recommendation 2013/179/EU (PEF); IPMVP protocol; European Code of Conduct on Data Centre Energy Efficiency (JRC).
Want to see the numbers in detail?
We can talk you through the infrastructure, how we measure consumption and Sooma Registered Mail.