Data centres accounted for almost a quarter of the electricity consumed in Ireland last year, up from 5 per cent in 2015, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) said on Tuesday, amid continuing public debate around the strain the sector is putting on Irish energy infrastructure.
A total of 7,663 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of electricity was used by data centres in 2025, up 10 per cent from 6,973GWh in 2024. Consumption by all other users, including households, rose by just 2 per cent over the same period, the statistics agency said.
In total, data centres alone accounted for 23 per cent of metered electricity consumption last year, up from just over a fifth in 2024.
The latest CSO figures also reveal that data centres increased their electricity consumption as the year went on, from 291 GWh in the first quarter of 2025 to 1,991 GWh in the fourth quarter.
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Data centres are forecast to account for a third of electricity consumption by the end of the decade.
Last December, the State moved to lift an effective moratorium on new data centre connections to the electricity grid, which had been in place since 2021.
The Commission for the Regulation of Utilities (CRU) said the new data centres can be built if they meet at least 80 per cent of their energy demand annually through renewable sources of power generation.
Minister for Enterprise Peter Burke said last month that the expansion of the Republic’s data centre network is a “strategic opportunity”.
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The Fine Gael TD was responding to a report commissioned by Friends of the Earth that said that electricity demand from data centres is adding €90 a year to the average household utility bill.
The Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) said recently that multinational companies operating in the Republic have invested significantly in equipment related to data centres over the past year, driven by the ongoing artificial intelligence boom.
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“This investment has been linked to the import of equipment for data centres, particularly those used to facilitate [AI],” the ESRI said.
“These would be, for example, the chips or the processors, or the pieces of material that are needed for the data centres that are here in Ireland,” said institute research professor Conor O’Toole.
Separate CSO figures published today reveal that total electricity consumption increased by 3.4 per cent, with large energy users – including data centres – using 9 per cent more energy in 2025 than in 2024.
Household electricity usage increased by just 1 per cent, and accounted for 28 per cent of the total. Commercial and industrial customers, meanwhile, accounted for 72 per cent.
Domestic users in urban areas accounted for 18 per cent of the national total, while rural households accounted for 9 per cent, said Dr Grzegorz Głaczyński, statistician in the CSO’s climate and energy division.
However, he said commercial and industrial users remain the “primary drivers” of power demand, with high-volume demand typically peaking in the midafternoon.
