‘Enough is enough' – households being forced to subsidise the costs of data centres, says Sinn Féin MEP

Irish Independent

10 hours ago

It comes after the Commission for the Regulation of Utilities (CRU) ­decided to increase the electricity ­network charges for households, but reduce the charges for large users such as data centres.
Dublin MEP Lynn Boylan accused the CRU of making households subsidise the costs of data centres.
The Sinn Féin politician said this was 'incredible at a time when bills are crippling so many'.
In a draft decision, the regulator is proposing an €18bn investment in the country's electricity system.
This will mean network tariffs – part of the charges that make up ­customer bills – will rise to fund the revamp.
Earlier this month, the CRU issued a press release saying the five-year investment plan should add between €6 and €16 to the average annual household bill.
However, a deeper dive into the regulatory documents revealed that the investment plan could add €80 to an average annual domestic bill.
This is a rise of 21pc in the network charges for households, taking ­annual network charges for consumers to €454 a year.
Extra large energy users could see their network charges fall by between 3pc and 18pc up to 2030, under different scenarios the regulator has modelled.
The €18bn investment is needed to pay for strengthening networks to cope with extreme events such as Storm Éowyn and allow for the connection of tens of thousands of new homes and businesses.
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Ms Boylan said that under the CRU's draft decision, households and SMEs will see their electricity network charges rise. At the same time, large energy users such as data centres will get reductions of up to 18pc.
'Regulatory documents reveal that grid upgrades are being driven in part by the growing electricity demands of data centres, whose usage has increased 400pc since 2015,' Ms Boylan said. 'In effect, the entities driving the increased need for grid investment are being asked to contribute less, while the general public pays more.'
Now data centres are driving up the cost of electricity in a cost-of-living crisis
She said this amounts to households being forced to subsidise the costs of data centres.
'The CRU will dress this up as a complicated technical decision, but at the end of the day this is a political choice to side with Big Tech's data centres over households,' she said.
She said data centres were making it harder to build houses in a housing crisis, but were also making it harder to keep the lights on in an energy crisis.
'Now data centres are driving up the cost of electricity in a cost-of-living crisis. Enough is enough.'
The CRU insisted large energy users will end up paying multiples more than residential electricity users in network charges.
Data centres are just one part of the growing electricity demand and the CRU said it continues to ­introduce measures to manage their impact and ensure a balanced, secure energy supply for all users.
It said the decrease in network charges for extra-large energy users is mostly attributed to the decline in costs from recent years associated with temporary increases in the transmission tariffs.
These contributed to larger increases in the bills of large energy users over the last five years when compared to smaller customer groups.
It said that between 2020 and this year, typical large energy users experienced a 167pc increase in network charges, compared with a 35pc increase for domestic customers.