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Irish Independent

Energy expert says Ireland currently doesn't have enough resources to power data centres

Professor Hannah Daly told politicians in Leinster House that coalition policy overlooked the enormous problems data centres cause for the country's power supply and climate obligations. Ireland might some day be a good place to locate data centres, but it currently had neither a strong enough electricity network or sufficient renewable energy to support them, she said. A data centre development launched by Taoiseach Micheál Martin in Arklow last Friday would have to burn gas to generate its own electricity, creating carbon emissions equivalent to 200,000 cars annually. Professor Daly said these extra emissions – and those of many other data centres in planning – were not accounted for in the country's carbon budgets, an omission she said was 'a very significant blindspot'. If the Echelon facilities in Arklow were eventually connected to a proposed offshore wind farm, they would consume half of all the renewable electricity generated there. This followed the trend where all additional renewable energy generated since 2015 had been devoured by data centres. Under the Climate Action Plan, renewables were meant to replace existing fossil fuel use by the country generally – not to feed new demand from an unsustainable industry. Ireland's overall electricity demand grew by 2.6pc annually since 2015, but data centre demand grew by 22.6pc annually. 'The concern is that electricity demand by data centres is outpacing the increase in renewables,' Prof Daly said. Not only did this mean renewables were not displacing fossil fuels, but data centres were actually driving increased fossil fuel use. She said narratives supporting data centre growth were laced with myths. ADVERTISEMENT The claim that data centres drove the rollout of renewables through corporate power purchase agreements – deals whereby energy companies built wind and solar farms to supply the industry – did not match the reality where less than 20pc of data centre power came from such arrangements. It was claimed that if Ireland did not host data centres, they would go to countries with even less renewables to feed them but that ignored the fact that other countries in Europe had surplus renewables that could easily support more data centres. Data centres were categorised as essential infrastructure but there was no transparency around what data they hosted, how much was essential and how much was 'zombie data'. It was said data centres would only use fossil gas temporarily and then replace it with biomethane but all available biomethane would be needed to displace existing fossil gas use. 'I'm not against data centres but it's an issue of timing,' Prof Daly said. 'Once we have scaled up renewables, once our grid is ready, Ireland might be an ideal place to locate data centres but if we do that before we have renewables in place, before the electricity grid is ready, it will add to the fossil fuels problem.' A small number of mainly opposition TDs turned up to hear her presentation.