Data centre expansion ‘a runaway train taking Ireland away from climate targets’

The proliferation of data centres in Ireland is a “a runaway train” that is “exacerbating our fossil fuel dependency”, the Oireachtas committee on artificial intelligence (AI) has been told. Representatives from the environmental charity Friends of the Earth called for a moratorium on data centres being built when addressing the committee on Tuesday.Its chief executive, Deirdre Duffy, said the data centre industry “should be regulated for the public good” and was “now on a runaway train, and it’s moving us in the opposite direction to our climate objectives”.“We are in irreversible tipping points. Europe is the fastest warming continent,” she said. READ MORE“If we can put a moratorium in place, calm down the pace for a little bit – because it’s been unchecked, expanded growth over a number of years without regulation – then we can all take a breath, figure out what we want to do, put the regulation in place, and not repeat the same mistakes that have happened previously.”A recent UN report described the Republic as “a live cautionary example” of energy demand running ahead of infrastructure due, in large part, to data centres and AI. Data centres accounted for almost a quarter of the electricity consumed in Ireland last year, up from 5 per cent in 2015, according to the Central Statistics Office.Rosi Leonard, who leads Friends of the Earth’s data centres campaign, said “despite” such warnings “we are now entering a worrying era of hyperscale buildout in Ireland.” “There is over 700 megawatts of data centre development in planning stages across the country. Applications in the planning process, such as this, represent a potential 11 per cent increase to the country’s peak electricity demand,” she said. “This is the same as adding a county the size of Cork to our grid in the next two to three years, potentially.”Leonard said Ireland had not yet enforced article 12 of the Energy Efficiency Directive, an EU regulation requiring companies to publish the amount of energy and water used by their data centres.“We have no idea of the sustainability metrics of data centres in Ireland right now, because we haven’t enforced article 12,” she told the committee. “This is basically why we argue for a moratorium – because the lack of good data is really creating a massive blind spot, and we have heard warnings from multiple agencies ... so putting a pause on new data centre development right now would be quite sensible and legitimate.” Leonard noted that Irish households and businesses were asked to reduce their water consumption amid a hosepipe ban during the summer, but “there was no parallel plan in terms of asking data centres to reduce consumption, and they weren’t even required to submit their water usage.”Fianna Fáil Senator Malcolm Bryne said he had a problem with the narrative that data centres were “inherently evil”. “We are all using data centres, and we are going to continue to use them, and a modern economy and society depends on them.”Byrne said he favoured allowing “the expansion of data centres, but it has to be linked to the development of renewable energies”.David Jensen, a Geneva-based digital sustainability consultant, told the committee that if a moratorium was introduced in Ireland, “the data centre companies will take their investment elsewhere”. “It could be a good idea to have a moratorium in the sense that it doesn’t feel like there’s a game plan in place in terms of what the actual real footprint of data centres are,” he said. “There’s a lot of missing numbers right now, so it could make sense to pause. But the consequence of pausing is that investment could go elsewhere. So it’s a trade-off, all of this is a trade-off.”