Unchecked growth in Irish data centres is undermining Ireland’s ability to meet critical 2030 climate targets and is leading to increased fossil fuel consumption, a new study warns.
Data centres, currently experiencing a boom under artificial intelligence (AI) growth, are driving additional greenhouse emissions from both electricity and natural gas consumption, and also threatening legally-binding carbon budgets, the report adds.
The independent research produced for Friends of the Earth Ireland was conducted by energy analyst Prof Hannah Daly of UCC.
The Irish Fiscal Advisory Council has warned failure to meet emissions reduction targets in the Government’s climate plan and in carbon budgets – that set carbon polluting limits on all sectors of the economy – could lead to European Union compliance fines of €20 billion in 2030.
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Without data centres, Ireland’s electricity demand would have been relatively stable, the report says. Instead, demand between 2012 and 2022 grew by 24.7 per cent, the second-fastest rate in the EU. Between 2017 and 2023, all additional wind energy generation in Ireland was absorbed by data centres.
“Without decisive action, data centres will continue to divert renewable energy to serving [electricity] demand growth rather than displacing fossil fuels; deepen reliance on fossil fuels and exacerbate Ireland’s carbon budget overshoot and energy security threats,” the report published on Tuesday finds.
“The current trajectory of data centre demand is incompatible with Ireland’s climate goals. Data centres are growing far faster than the renewable energy procured to meet their needs,” Prof Daly said.
“Moreover, data centres are connecting to the natural gas network to get around constraints in the power network. This is prolonging Ireland’s dependence on fossil fuels ... This underscores the need for policy interventions that ensure renewables displace fossil fuels rather than fuelling new demand.”
The research reveals “a stark picture concerning the increased use of fossil fuels by data centres and how this rising consumption of gas by the industry is creating a blind spot in our climate action planning”, Friends of the Earth said.
The analysis supports the case for a moratorium on new data centres and expansion of existing ones until a robust legislative framework was in place. As negotiations for the programme for government begin, “now is the time for decision-makers to reconsider their stance, and ensure climate action is prioritised in every sector, including technology”, Friends of the Earth said.
Its data centre campaigner Rosi Leonard added: “Soaking up 21 per cent of our electricity supply and rising, we are at the coalface of a scenario where Big Tech is uncritically and incorrectly accepted as an unquestioned force for good despite evidence which shows that its unlimited expansion risks pumping far more pollution into our environment than previously thought.”
Ireland had allowed itself to become a data dumping ground for corporations such as Amazon and Meta, she said.
Friends of the Earth head of policy Jerry MacEvilly said the analysis “completely blows out of the water the PR spin that data centres expansion is in any way sensible or sustainable on both climate and energy security grounds”.
In negotiations on forming a new government, he said political parties must support “a pause on connecting more data centres until the proposed policy framework in this expert research has been implemented and the threats data centres pose to climate and [energy] security have been removed”.
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