Why has the Government uncritically accepted data centres as a force for good, despite all the evidence to the contrary?

Published originally as an opinion piece by Rosi Leonard in the Irish Times on 1st April 2025

For a long time, the reason given for so many data centres being located in Ireland was simply the weather. In a cold, damp climate, it was suggested, the servers storing data for the likes of Amazon and Meta would be less likely to overheat, reducing cooling costs. It soon became obvious that this wasn’t the case. In Meta’s data centre in Meath, for example, the company uses more water than any other Meta data centre in the world.

So why has the Government uncritically accepted data centres as a force for good, despite all the evidence to the contrary?

Since 2015 data centre electricity use has rocketed by 400 per cent, now soaking up 21 per cent of our electricity demand – which is more than all urban homes in the country. For context, the European average is 3 per cent.

We have some of the highest energy bills in Europe and one of the most fossil fuel- reliant energy systems. We need to roll out renewables fast to reduce polluting emissions, tackle high energy costs and build a more resilient and cleaner system.

But the proliferation of data centres is preventing this – indeed demand from data centres outstripped all additional wind energy between 2017 and 2023. And this situation is expected to deteriorate with data centres projected to guzzle more than 30 per cent of electricity demand in the next 10 years.

Given the colossal rise of data centres and resulting impacts on our environment and energy systems, Ireland is now presented internationally as a poster-child of poor planning and regulation. EirGrid was forced to restrict data centre development in the Dublin area due to the extreme pressures being placed on the grid.

Rather than put brakes on the industry, the Government has left the problem to state bodies and local councils to figure out how these developments – which demand so much water, electricity and land – fit in with other vital infrastructure such as housing and services.

And it gets riskier: despite the programme for government’s pledge to develop data centres “in alignment with our decarbonisation objectives”, data centre developers are increasingly seeking direct connections to the gas network. Even by Gas Networks Ireland’s most conservative projections, the additional demand from data centres connecting to gas will blow our legally binding carbon limits.

Government now supports importing liquefied natural gas (LNG) in the name of energy security. Yet it is data centres that are risking this security and pumping up the need for gas. The US company pitching to build an LNG terminal in Kerry plans to develop data centres on their site. Clearly their business model is not to support households who keep seeing their bills rise, but to lock in demand for some of the most expensive and harmful gas in the world.

The promise of jobs has not been forthcoming, with the previous Minister for Trade unable to explain how many staff data centres employ when built. Artificial intelligence (AI) is being used as the latest reason to let data centre developers expand their portfolios – while companies boast about cutting staff due to the roll out of artificial intelligence.

There is a fundamental injustice at the heart of government policy: neither our energy system nor our decarbonisation commitments were planned to serve the needs of one industry. The Coalition’s vision of making Ireland the data centre capital of the world is working against the needs of communities and it creates a two-tier system where one industry is allowed to do as it wants.

The worse the problem gets, the clearer the answer becomes: we need a moratorium on new data centre development and a policy framework that respects environmental and energy limits. Then and only then can we ensure a just energy transition that is in the interest of people, not Big Tech.

Rosi Leonard is data centre campaign lead at Friends of the Earth Ireland