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IRISH DEMAND FOR electricity increased last year driven largely by new grid connections for data centres, the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI) has said.
Energy emissions fell by nearly 8% in 2023, a record pace for the sector – but still not fast enough to stay on track to avoid overshooting legally-binding carbon budgets.
The SEAI has published a report on Ireland’s Energy Balance for 2023 and a mid-year review of energy use in 2024.
In the first six months of 2024, emissions from the electricity sector reached their lowest level for decades.
Renewable energy capacity increased in 2023, allowing Ireland to make progress on cutting its energy emissions, but total electricity usage rose due to new data centres.
The increase in electricity demand is outpacing the connection of new renewable energy sources, which poses a potential challenge to Ireland’s climate ambitions.
The SEAI’s Energy Balance report for 2023 shows that Ireland used 4.4% more electricity last year compared to the previous year.
Of the extra 1.32 terrawatt hours (TWh) of electricity demand, 1.06 TWh came from data centres. Data centres accounted for 20% of Ireland’s electricity demand in 2023, while the residential sector, consisting of 1.9 million occupied dwellings, accounted for 25.5%, according to the SEAI.
Ireland set new national records last year for electricity generated through wind power (11.67 TWh) and solar power (0.65 TWh). There was a 96% increase (to 0.18 TWh) in the amount of electricity generated by the rooftop solar panels on Irish homes.
Transport emissions increased slightly, with fossil fuel reliance remaining over 90% and energy used for aviation reached a record high.
SEAI Director of Research and Policy Insights Margie McCarthy welcomed the finding of a “new ‘personal best’ for Ireland in terms of energy-related emissions reductions” but cautioned: “At the moment, we are falling far short of where we need to be.”
“Change is notably afoot. Now we need to turn ambition into action to meet our national climate obligations and avoid significant compliance costs against legally binding EU targets.”
In the first six months of 2024, the electricity sector’s emissions were down 17.2%, while transport emissions dropped 1.3%.
Residential emissions from gas in the first half of 2024 were up 5.1%, residential emissions from kerosene were up 5.6% and industry and service emissions from gas were up 7.9%.
The drop in electricity emissions was driven mainly by increased use of imported electricity that reduced the use of fossil fuels in Ireland, the SEAI said, along with increased use of Irish renewables, with 10.2% more renewable electricity generated than in the same period last year.
Provisional 2024 data for transport shows that emissions may slightly fall.
However, overall, Ireland is on track to exceed its first carbon budget in 2025, the SEAI says.
This echoes previous warnings from the Environment Protection Agency and Climate Change Advisory Council.
“With the data we have to hand, it appears that we will marginally exceed the first carbon budget for electricity, leaving an already tight budget slightly reduced for the second period to 2030,” McCarthy said.
“The situation with transport will be very challenging as we will likely exceed the first transport sectoral ceiling by some considerable amount perhaps requiring a halving of annual transport emissions through the second period,” she said.
“The good news is that we already have the technical solutions to deliver on climate obligations. We just need to deploy them at sufficient scale and pace,” McCarthy said, adding that we need to focus on offshore wind, grid scale solar PV, and electricity grid development.
To tackle heat emissions, we need to eliminate oil and gas boilers, replacing them with electric heat pumps and building district heat networks in towns and cities, she advised.
Individuals also need to be supported to reduce their transport energy demand through the provision of reliable and safe public transport and better encouraging of walking and cycling, as well as supporting a shift to electric vehicles.
“Most importantly we need to win the hearts and minds of everyone in Ireland to motivate, empower and enable people to act. This can only happen if everyone is on board,” she said.
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It’s clear we don’t need to target domestic energy use. It is data centres that need to be stopped.
@Furious George – The Wasp: make them pay peak daytime household rates. 24/24h.
@Furious George – The Wasp: They get preferential rates…… https://www.irishtimes.com/business/2023/02/13/some-multinationals-pay-less-for-electricity-than-irish-smes-and-homes/
@another one? what’s going on is the semi state sec: outrageous
@Furious George – The Wasp:
Who here doesn’t use or need a data centre?
Social media, like photographs, video clips, Netflix, Spotify, WhatsApp, Tinder,your tap and go card, going to the doctor, hospitals, medical records, patient records, financial institutions, banks, restaurants for bookings, airlines for processing customer information, all use data centres.
Secondary storage is cheap, you can reduce your digital footprint by backing up your important files to memory stick or external hard drives instead of the cloud.
Not all data stored in a data centre is environmentally equal either.
Consider the difference between an online service which removes the need to use energy to travel to the service provider and the multiple storage of the same video content from a music concert.
@4g4mPnNi: there are 208 countries in the world. 16 of which are on the same latitude north of the equator. More north of us. I’m not bothered cou ting the countries with a similar latitude in the southern hemisphere. I guess my point is , why should they all locate here? Why do they take up so much of our usage while other countries have few or no data centres . They pay little tax compared to the normal worker . They get cheaper rates for electricity and cause a massive strain on our grid. Moderation should be the way foward .
@Furious George – The Wasp: comment written on a phone, while sitting watching Netflix just before you check your bank account balance all done before you go to bed so you can be up early for work where you have to send emails yadda Yadda yadda. Stop talking from yer whoop!!
@Thomas Meaney: Are you saying that the Internet would cease to exist if we didn’t have data centres in Ireland?
Government signed up to all of these unreachable climate targets. Now we’ll get fined billions for not hitting them. Money racket for someone, if ever there was one.
@Tony Murphy: How can we build hundreds of thousands of new houses (mainly for immigrants), fully dependent on electricity, and at the same time reduce our usage of electricity.
@Thomas Sheridan: We tie our own laces together, its sort of hilarious. ““The situation with transport will be very challenging as we will likely exceed the first transport sectoral ceiling by some considerable amount perhaps requiring a halving of annual transport emissions through the second period,”… like how? Stop people working?… Eamon Ryan literally asleep.
@Thesaltyurchin: on a positive climate related note, some large industrial users, like Intel, are on the verge of bankruptcy and closing down. Think of all the transport emissions savings as well when 6000 people stop travelling to work there.
@Thomas Sheridan: Horrid isn’t it… everywhere I’ve been governments a re mostly trying to move their people around to the benefit of their daily lives, weather its thousands of mopeds or state of art railways, but here it’s just all messed up, like the opposite or something.
@Thomas Sheridan: It has a 6% bankruptcy at the moment so it is unlikely!
@Thomas Sheridan: you don’t every house will have one hours esb and like it
We have no chance of meeting the government’s climate change targets when the government’s other policy is to grow the population at a large rate.
@Mark R: One of the biggest shames is the EU Marginal Pricing Policy which is directly responsible for the huge increases in electricity prices. Despite promising to remove gas from the policy, the EU has done nothing for the consumer who continues to pay extortionate rates for electricity.
Not one candidate brought this madness up in the recent EU election campaigns. Not one media asked any candidate a question about this policy.
It doesn’t matter how much renewable energy we produce, consumers are never going to see a cent in savings thanks to the disastrous Marginal Pricing Policy. That money will go to lining the pockets of vested interests.
Ireland needs to shift it’s energy policy to building nuclear and become self sufficient.
Record year for wind & solar energy output & Data Centres used up 80% of that increase, a red flag if ever there was one. Nobody shouting stop or calling for investigations into why the IDA, Councils & Eamon Ryan are ploughing the State headlong towards having most of Europes data stored here, putting our Grid infrastructure to the point of Blackouts & blowing our Emissions Targets out the window. Follow the Money !!! Households paying the highest rate for Energy in Europe & subsidizing behemoths like Goggle & Amazon, the whole scandal stinks. Ordinary families paying the price for our Govt being in the pocket of big business & 40 more Data Centres being built or in the Planning process, no real journalists left to expose it either.
@SV3tN8M4: If you’re looking for real journalists, you came to the wrong place.
@SV3tN8M4: They don’t care and The Green Party are Fine Gael on bikes. They screw over working families to ensure profiteers in big green industry can get away like bandits at our expense. The Greens just want to replace Big Oil with Big Wind. Same circus, different clowns.
Build the data centres in cooler climates with lots of renewable energy (hydro electric) like Sweden or Norway or Finland. We’re Full!
Electricity prices for household consumers
Highest electricity prices in Germany and Ireland.
@Dave Callaghan: imagine wanting something, that benefits the country’s economy, to halt growth. Are you on something??lol?? The issue is with the grid. We need to increase capacity. Simples!!!
@Darren Lynch: it doesn’t benefit our economy, that’s part of the problem. Better to build housing rather than data centres. They only benefit to the economy is the build phase.
I’ve worked in this space and very few jobs result from data centres. It’s best to build them in colder climates as suggested elsewhere in these comments.
Massive inroads have been made to make them more climate friendly but employment is very low in modern data centres. Invest in housing.
@Darren Lynch: you’re spot on
@Con Cussed: Few jobs but a lot of tax – easy to see why government likes them.
@Dave Callaghan: Lol! Sweeden and Finland are not nearly as desperate as we are.
There are 2 certainties in life : the Irish voting in a Fine Fail Fine Gael government and them making an absolute mess of the situation.
Wow another FFG success story.
Same as the ozone I suppose
If we’re fined by eu for being bold children the data centres should pay the fine and we’ll all wake up to electricity blackouts because of these same data centres other countries are not as soft as ireland but we give everything away cheaply
Electric car are also demanding if you consider they are also increasing. They want more taxes and try to justify it. Hybrid use petrol so will be taxed too. Corporations will not pay more for their data centre.
@Dominic Leleu: no compromise AND you have to pay extra, this is Irish politics. They’re giving away electric cars in the UK, but we cant touch them
@Thesaltyurchin: No they are not, they are selling cars interest free.
@Gary Kearney: true, *blushing skirt raised embarrassment!
So when will all this end. The way big business has a free ride on the backs of the bruses they create is staggering. Will a change in government end it,I doubt it. Wil mass demonstrations change it,I doubt it. The capitalists have taken over and you are just a tax number.
And what are the benefits of the data centres for us ?
Jobs ? Revenues ? Does that worth it ?
@Dominic Leleu: No benefit after initial build phase. Few jobs.
Good old French nuclear power to the rescue
Build nuclear power plants!
@Alan Kennedy: could you just imagine the fiasco of that,when you see the children’s hospital etc etc etc
@Alan Kennedy: Please don’t.
Why are targets always set up to fail?
@Telemachine: because we have a bunch of muppets running the country,when did any irish goverment ever hit a target? roads,schools,climate (that is the biggest scam in history) this list goes on and on its usually over budget and over time the only target thay can hit is tax take when they are shafting ordinary people.
They should only be allowed operator with their own generators.
@Dee: Great idea. That would be amazing for the environment!!!!lol!!!!
@Darren Lynch: Any new industry requiring massive energy usages should be required, as part of their planning requirements, to build renewable energy infrastructure to counteract their demand on the Grid. It shouldn’t be solely the responsibility of the grid.
@Susan: + Free access to Netflix and YouTube premium for all.
What about an A.I. government that operates purely on logic?
@Keth Tgi: AIs don’t operate on logic. Like many humans they tend to make things up.
One thing everyone needs to know – if we don’t build them here they’ll be built elsewhere and so there’s still an impact on the environment. If we don’t build them we lose out on investment and jobs..
@John Lee: There are few jobs. The return on investment is not there.
Now to force smart meter home users to reduce by screwing them in peak hours so the new joe soap will have dinner at 1 am. Do the washing at 4am ect car use will also be hammered mileage tax to reduce their emissions farmers will only grow trees but will they protect our fish stocks
May introduce a new green tax to at least offset this,problem solved
This is my concern, we are granting planning at a rapid pace for solar farms on the best of land. We are told its the best way forward. ARE WE SURE? solar farms are simply feeding the data centres. Not to mention the water consumption!. Can we not be more creative around location of solar farms and developing stronger policy around data centres.
We have the wind and waves and yet we do not push those recourses.
Green energy and as much as we want, who complain, the greens.
We have wide open bogs which could have wind generators, who complains the greens!
Wave generators, it could upset the fish or the birds.
It goes on and on!
@Gary Kearney: wind energy is the most expensive as we are going to find out when 40 euro per household goes on your bill to fund them
Let be honest governments and 1 percenters of Ireland and world dont give beep. Its less well off who try harder and are asked to suffer more so they can have little more. Be better world without internet i feel. But let s continue to do things without thinking how this going work. Thats what Irish government being doing for years. Thats why country is unstable as cost living out of control. But there good . Dont forget vote them back in next year.
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