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CAN IRELAND CONTINUE to roll out the red carpet for data centres while we struggle to meet our climate action targets and worry about the certainty of energy supply?
It’s a question that has certainly concentrated minds since it emerged recently that data centres around the country now consume the same amount of electricity as the total number of urban dwellings, or almost twice that of all rural homes combined.
The figures released by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) should serve as an urgent wake-up call for the Government. They show that the percentage of metered electricity consumed by data centres rose from 5% in 2015 to 18% in 2022. Electricity consumption by data centres was up by 31% between 2021 and 2022. The increase since 2015 was a staggering 400%.
Meanwhile, households reduced their electricity use by 9%. This drop has been attributed to the post-Covid gradual return to the office, as well as consumers’ efforts to bring down skyrocketing energy bills. However, as high demand is a key driver of energy costs, soaring consumption by data centres is pushing up the price of electricity for all of us.
The Government has dismissed previous warnings that a surge in electricity consumption by data centres could rise to 30% by 2030. Worryingly, the latest CSO statistics indicate that we are on course to meet or even exceed that figure.
When it comes to reducing our energy consumption, individual households are again being asked to do all the heavy lifting.
Responsibility for meeting our climate action targets should not fall on individual domestic customers while the Government turns a blind eye to voracious electricity consumption by data centres.
On the same day that the CSO figures were released, the fragility of Ireland’s energy supply was also laid bare. EirGrid issued its first amber warning of the year due to low levels of wind power being generated in the electricity system. Reduced levels of solar power and outages at several generators were also blamed for the alert. We can expect to see further warnings issued when winter approaches and the demand for electricity rises.
Like many things in Ireland, it is lack of regulation and oversight that lie at the heart of the problem. While we recognise that data centres are needed in our growing economy to cater for the tech environment we have created, they must be efficient, properly managed and regulated – something that is not happening at the moment.
A single entity – possibly a strengthened Commission for Regulation of Utilities (CRU) – should manage this process. As things stand, each Government department, State body or local authority deals with separate components and, unbelievably, the CRU does not even have a list or register of data centres.
This was evident when the CSO was forced to collect information on data centres using a variety of methods, including internet searches and an examination of customers in business parks with high annual electricity consumption.
The Social Democrats believe there should be a pause on further data centre connections until a strategic analysis has been carried out by the Government to ensure that Ireland can cope with the pressures we are seeing on energy demand. We also need clear definitions as to what constitutes a data centre and a full analysis of their impact on our climate change targets.
We are already fighting an uphill battle in this area. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has warned that Ireland is on course to miss its 2030 climate targets by a considerable distance. Even if all the measures in the Climate Action Plan are implemented, the agency predicts that the Government will only achieve a 29% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by the end of the decade – well short of the legally binding target of 51%.
Despite this, there is no appetite within Government for a cap on data centres. Instead, we have received platitudes from ministers about making them more efficient or vague suggestions about powering them differently.
We are expected to believe that we have capacity for more data centres while simultaneously reducing greenhouse gasses – yet there is no detail as to how we will square that particular circle.
There has been a de facto moratorium on data centres in the wider Dublin area since 2022, but we know there are several being constructed around the country and others with planning permission that don’t yet have grid access.
But how many will be enough? What is our limit? And who determines who gets priority in an energy supply crisis?
In the push for Ireland to become the data centre capital of the world, the IDA has succeeded in enticing some of the biggest global tech companies to set up here. The approach has undoubtedly sustained tens of thousands of jobs and led to bumper corporation tax receipts. But in its eagerness to please, the Government has over-promised something it ultimately cannot deliver on – security of supply. This is something that international companies have already expressed concern about. It will be difficult to incentivise further foreign direct investment if we are unable to keep the lights on.
The lack of transparency surrounding the operation of data centres is troubling. In a recent parliamentary question, I asked the Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications to outline how information on the collation of data centre energy consumption is used. In his response, Minister Eamon Ryan cited EU law, saying member states have an obligation to preserve the confidentiality of commercially sensitive information. As such, he said that specific detailed information on energy usage for a particular sector cannot be disclosed. This is on top of the Department of Enterprise and Employment not being able to provide details of the number of jobs directly linked to data centres.
Not having strategic oversight of data centres is inexcusable. Failure to plan for their future growth will come back to haunt us if we don’t have an honest discussion now about how many more we can take.
Jennifer Whitmore is a Social Democrats TD for Wicklow and party spokesperson on energy, climate action and biodiversity.
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The great irish swindle continues cheered on at speed by ffg .
@Robert Halvey: get a life. Its progress. Will we go back to hedgerows.
Significantly reduce them, and don’t allow any more to be built. Criminal how much electricity they use.
@Chett Richards: stop pontificating. Why have you not campaigned for the halt of the pharma projects nationwide if your so worried? Wuxi Dundalk, MSD Carlow, the Eli Lili’s, the Pfizer’s…. They run off fresh air maybe?
@Chett Richards: they pay for the electricity they use, plus data centres are necessary infrastructure for the companies that contribute 10s of billions per annum in taxes.
If we control Europe’s data, we are relevant to any future European energy strategy. However if we become insular and throw them all out and shut our doors, the rest of Europe moves on without us. Then we continue to have to rely on the Brits for our surplus energy, I know which strategy I prefer. If you want to sit at the table, you need to bring something with you.
The article written on a phone or a laptop, emailed to the Journal who stored it on the Journals cloud partner server. The author of the article wrote it after checking her bank balance on her banks phone app and that was after she finished watching the latest episode of her favourite series on Netflix, which happened after she ordered something off Amazon but she had to wait to do that because she had an appointment with her doctor who looked up her details in his office off his computer connected to his cloud server….do I keep going? Ya know what let’s ban all the data centres of the future from Ireland let them build them in Germany, Holland, Denmark or Sweden and good old paddy the Irishman will stick to the tried and trusted pen and paper invented by the Egyptians.
My opinion is that it shows a lack of understanding of the energy market to suggest that data centres have a negative impact on energy supply
@Mick Duvanny: well said Mick. It’s the populist opinion of the media that has the bee lovin hippy gardner types up in arms. Yes data centres do use electricity but so does every industry out there. You dont see the eco freaks campaign or speak against all the pharma expansions MSD, Eli Lili, Pfizer, Wuxi. What do those plants run on? Puffs of wind from butterfly wings or recycled daisies maybe? You’d have to laugh sometimes…
@Thomas Meaney: Simplistic tosh. People aren’t against data centres. People are against lack of long-term government planning as to how to power them. Since nuclear power is not on the table in Ireland, what is on the table. Some evidence of thinking about the issue would be nice, instead of partisan shouting matches.
Curiously the deputy doesn’t say how her party in government would select any additional data centres for closure or where she reckons they should be located instead that would be so much better from.a global climate change perspective.
@Daniel Sullivan: Every time I start to lean towards voting for the social democrats, they always seem to bring up some badly thought through populist ideas.
@Daniel Sullivan: Data centres do not emit much CO2 (34% of our electricity is from wind, a proportion that will increase). So while they use 18% of our electricity, they are responsible for just under 3% of our GHG emissions (the same as an electric car by the way).
But an airport or cement plant is an entirely different story, an airport runs on fossil fuels, a cement plant emits CO2 when it heats limestone:
CaCO3 → CaO (quicklime) + CO2
You would swear it was free electricity they are getting! How about increasing generation and accelerating offshore wind. Data centers inject billions into the economy and provide thousands off jobs, most of these jobs are off site in engineering and operations, argument of very little jobs inst the reality once you consider whats actually running there!
While the effects of data centres on electricity consumption is very important, they threaten the reliability of our electricity supply, especially because the transition to renewables makes the grid more vulnerable to power hungry Data Centres, they are not the main cause of increasing Greenhouse Gas Emissions, it is the expansion of the Dairy industry.
The Dairy industry is now responsible for c. 25% of national emissions, a share that has almost doubled since 2000. Data centres on the other hand currently account for under 3% of national greenhouse gas emissions (and 18% of electricity consumption).
Dairy cow numbers increased 52% between 2005 – 2022, from 0.996 million to 1.51 million dairy cows, jump stimulated by the ending of the EU’s milk quota in 2015 (CSO Table: AAA06).
Also, the dairy industry produced 8.4 billion litres of milk in 2021, of which 94% was exported.
As a result, Greenhouse Gas Emissions from the Dairy industry increased 95% between 2000 and 2017, by 2017 the Dairy Industry was responsible for 61% of agricultural emissions (310.9 out of 503.09 thousand tonnes CO2eq). As a result, the proportion of national GHG emissions from Agriculture increased:
2021 37.50%
2020 38.20%
2019 36.40%
2018 36.40%
2017 35.30%
2016 33.70%
2015 34.10%
Finally, last year dairy farms witnessed record profits, despite inflation and higher costs, with an average Family Farm Income (FFI) of €150,884, a 53% increase year-on-year.
Refs.:
Läpple, D., Carter, C.A. and Buckley, C., 2022. EU milk quota abolition, dairy expansion, and greenhouse gas emissions. Agricultural Economics, 53(1), pp.125-142. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/agec.12666
@David Jordan: that narrative won’t suit the hippies Dave because the journalists aren’t talking about the cows they are talking about bad bad data centres because it’s populist and cheap news. They are not talking about the underinvestment in renewables and modern energy generation methods buy successive governments for the past 40 years (the same numpties still in power to this day)
Why can’t Ireland ever be a leader why always let it fall into a mess and then react when it’s close to bursting. Water, housing, healthcare, energy, the banking system did go bust and we’re all paying (along with our kids and their kids to come) for it.
@Thomas Meaney: Also, by the way, data centres are as efficient as our electric vehicles, both run on 39% renewably generated (zero emission) electricity, a proportion that is steadily increasing. Airports, Cement plants, cows, different story. It almost seems this focus on data centres aims to distract us something.
Transatlantic fibre cables make land here so of course we will have a lot of data centres but it should be an opportunity to grow our off shore wind farms and start tidal generation at their tax expense.
Our population is growing fast and increasing our carbon footprint.
Our population is now 45% higher than in 1990.
Let’s stop bringing in extra people so we can reduce our emissions.
Having only skimmed through the article, I may have missed it. But the main point is that all those data centres are not here to serve only the Irish population. OK we store lots of cr@p, but not enough for all this capacity.
They are here for a large part of Europe and if we could bill other countries to store all that data I’m sure fewer people would complain.
Making them more energy-efficient and solar-powered would help as well.
People have no clue!!
The Major companies, should build their own generators and battery, banks, (they more than likely have back-up ones anyway), but we can’t, drink. eat, or use Data, for any other purpose, than collect information, etc. The world managed, without this stuff, and was doing quite well, up to about thirty years ago, all this may begin to fade away in years, to come, and we will be stuck with massive, unemployment, massive unusable buildings etc.
The data centres employ thousands. Plus food suppliers, cleaning companys etc etc in the area would go out of business.
More research needs to be done to come up with an environmentally clean alternative to electricity or at least reduce it.
Taking away peoples livelihoods is not the answer.
What’s the point of having jobs?
Interesting article
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