Power availability in Ireland

Like any industry, if data centers are too concentrated in the same area the power available on the grid becomes more scarce. For instance, Ireland has attracted many tech companies to set up in their territory, notably thanks to large financial advantages. The Irish Central Statistics Office estimated that data centers accounted for 11% of national electricity consumption in 2020 and 14% in 2021. The national electricity supplier estimates that at this rate data centers will represent 33% of Ireland’s electricity consumption by 2030. This growth is of course unsustainable for the energy provider Eirgrid and the latter has notably warned that it will no longer supply electrical power to new data center projects in Dublin until 2028. The place and importance of data centers is giving rise to important societal debates in Ireland and presages a larger problem of accounting between economic development, infrastructure management and climate policy.

This energy demand is also difficult to reconcile with the climate commitments which imply a reduction in energy consumption in absolute terms by 2050. For example, France must reduce its final energy consumption from 1600 TWh in 2020 to 900 TWh by 2050. However, the French energy network operator (RTE) estimates that electricity consumption by French data centres will increase threefold between 2020 and 2050. We still need to be sure that these infrastructures are worth the investment, enabling us to decarbonise other sectors of the French economy.