The rapid expansion of data centres in Ireland has added €360 to the average person’s bills, Friends of the Earth has estimated. 

Data centres accounted for 22% of all Irish electricity use in 2024 and that figure could hit 30% by 2030, powered by growing demand for AI and other technological services. 

Taoiseach Micheál Martin has said data centres are crucial to Ireland’s economic well being, insisting the country risks being “left well behind” without them and the AI they power. 

However, Friends of the Earth spokesperson Rosi Leonard said their huge energy consumption means they are “increasingly a cost of living issue”, adding that their use of 22% of Irish electricity is “globally completely unprecedented”. 

“Data centers are using more energy here in Ireland per capita than anywhere else in the world,” she told Newstalk Breakfast. 

“What that's doing is acting like a rising floor on Ireland's energy demand; it means that we are more and more vulnerable to price shocks in the wholesale market.”

Ms Leonard continued that this huge demand for energy means that Ireland is “forced to buy fossil gas”, which is a “really volatile” commodity. 

“That has cost us €750 million extra on top of our bills,” she said. 

“We projected in this research that it could rise to between €1.4 to €1.6 billion over the next 10 years if we do not limit the demand from data centers.

“It means that if you're living in Ireland over the last 10 years, you paid at least an average of €360 extra on your bills.”

A data centre. Picture by: Dmitriy Shironosov / Alamy Stock Photo

Overall, Ms Leonard characterised it as a “very worrying picture”. 

“We really think that if the Government is serious about reducing the cost of living, electricity prices in Ireland are the highest in the EU at the moment, they're going to need to tackle data centers,” she said. 

'Factories of the future'

Also on the programme, Irish Data Centre Supplier Alliance spokesperson Lorcan Allen argued that data centres are “essentially our factories of the future”. 

“They take our electricity, they process it into data services,” he explained. 

“Exports like our exports for 2024 alone were 20, nearly €280 billion, like over almost 60% of all our service exports now are from technology.”

Mr Allen added that, given the Irish economy’s reliance on the tech industry, data centres using 22% of Irish electricity is not exceptional. 

“Well, in Germany, which is renowned for its heavy industry, heavy industry accounts for 45 percent of all electricity use in Germany,” he said. 

“They support 270,000 jobs in our tech sector here.”

To those who argue that data centres are pushing up Ireland’s carbon footprint, Mr Allen said many renewable projects are financed by the companies that own data centres. 

“More than half of all renewable energy, wind and solar, connected to the grid since 2021 has been funded by data centers, by tech companies, corporate power purchase agreements between data center companies,” he said. 

“They're actively helping to bring new power onto the grid; there were six offshore wind projects in Ireland that entered a State auction system to try and get State supports. 

“Only four of them were successful, two didn't, but they're still being built because they were able to negotiate contracts with data center companies.”

Main image: A split of a data cnetre and a person calculating their bills. Picture by: Alamy.com.