Ireland faces fines from Brussels if planned new data centres go ahead, People Before Profit is warning.

Last year, data centres accounted for 14% of electricity use in Ireland and the centres now consume more energy than all the homes in rural Ireland put together. 

Energy demand by data centres is forecast to expand further and the UCC-based MaREI centre for energy, climate and marine research has estimated data centres could consume 30% of energy generated in Ireland by 2030. 

People Before Profit TD Bríd Smith believes data centres consume “way too much” energy and is worried Ireland will miss legally binding EU emission targets which will “mean that we will be fined about €3 billion by 2030”.

“They’re boasting about all the money they have to slosh around and the reserve cash and savings that we have accrued through corporation tax etc.,” she told Newstalk Breakfast.  

“That will all be swallowed up by breaking our emission targets.” 

Climate change

Deputy Smith said the country needs to take climate change more seriously and confirmed her party plans to introduce legislation into the Dáil to curtail their expansion.

“If we are hurtling towards and past 1.5 degrees of overheating of the planet, then we’re looking at a really, really dangerous situation for life on the planet itself,” she said. 

“Everything cannot be measured in monetary value. 

“Can I tell you this? The threat of multinationals and the high tech companies pulling out of here because they don’t have access to the national grid is nonsense. 

“They already have access to the national grid and now to the island grid - according to what we’re reading.

“The question is, how much should they expand? How much should we allow the proliferation of this industry?” 

A corridor in a data centre full of rack servers and supercomputers. Picture by: Aleksei Gorodenkov / Alamy Stock Photo

Galway East TD Seán Canney said data centres should be forced to pay any carbon emission fines they are responsible for.

“If they’re exceeding emissions, we should be fining them,” he said. 

“But if we have a situation where we’re going to ban data centres just because we don’t have the green energy to feed them, well I think that’s a question for us and our infrastructure thinking and our national development of this country. 

“We’ve got to get this right; we cannot just be saying, ‘No, no.’ 

“We cannot just say we’ll close down all the turf burning centres - which we’ve done - and now we’re bringing in back diesel generators to give us a backup supply.” 

Last summer, then-Taoiseach Micheál Martin said data centres "should not be blamed for all our energy problems" and described them as important for attracting foreign direct investment.

The Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications has been contacted for comment.

Main image: Bríd Smith. Image: Brian Lawless/PA Wire/PA Images