Call for moratorium on new data centres until benefits are fully examined
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With predictions data centres could be using up to 70% of Ireland’s energy capacity within a decade, an Oireachtas committee has heard a call for a moratorium on further centres until their benefits and consumption are researched.
At the the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Environment and Climate Action, Dr Patrick Bresnihan of Maynooth University highlighted the potential draw-down of energy for data centres by 2030.
Dublin is the data centre hub of Europe and was home to 25% of the entire data centre market as of 2018. The 70 centres currently operating in Ireland take up 11% of grid capacity, but Dr Bresnihan warned this could rise to 70% by 2030 without some kind of political intervention.
“With data centres, we can see right in front of us with these increasing applications, they have a huge drawdown on our current energy system," he said.
"It is within your power now to say we're not going to increase that drawdown,” he told the Oireachtas committee.
Over the past four years, demand for energy from data centres has increased annually by 600GWh. This is the equivalent of adding 140,000 households to the power system each year.
An average data centre by itself uses the same amount of energy as a town the size of Kilkenny (60MW). One centre can also use 500,000 litres of water per day to cool its systems – potentially rising to 5m litres per day in a heatwave.
EirGrid and the Commission for Regulation of Utilities (CRU) have raised serious concerns about the energy demands of data centres.
The CRU has proposed a moratorium on the development of any new data centres in Ireland, and two separate bills are going forward in the Dáil next week from People Before Profit and the Social Democrats calling for the same.
Dr Bresnihan said such a moratorium could “give enough space for there to be adequate research into the cost benefits of data centres, and into the kinds of technologies and infrastructures that could be developed” in order to reduce their energy consumption and/or carbon footprint.
Two years ago, Singapore introduced a moratorium on data centres, only to be lifted when renewable energy capacity and/or data storage technologies developed enough to reduce the emissions and energy burden they represent.
Mr Bresnihan pointed out that Singapore is “similarly placed [to Ireland] as a tech and digital hub with ambitious climate and renewable energy (solar) targets”. Singapore also has a similar population to Ireland at just over 5.7m.
Concerns were also raised before the committee about the carbon emissions involved with data centres’ energy consumption.
The centres are currently responsible for 1.58% of Ireland’s carbon emissions. They rely on the national electricity grid, which remains largely powered by gas, and requires back-up power generators which also tend to be gas-fired.
“Ireland is committed to achieving 70% renewable electricity by 2030. Even at this early stage, however, this looks overly ambitious. Achieving ambitious emissions and renewables targets by 2030 will undoubtedly be far more difficult with the addition of more data centres to the grid,” warned Dr Bresnihan.
“Ireland is committed to a just transition under the Paris Climate Agreement. This means the Irish state must ensure the fair distribution of costs and benefits associated with large-scale decarbonisation efforts.
"In a context where households are facing increasing energy bills and carbon taxes, the continued granting of planning permission to energy-intensive data centres is already being perceived as an unfair distribution of costs and benefits."