Energy use of data centres equivalent to powering 200,000 homes
Data Increase By Said The In From 2,757 An Hours, 2021, Cso Percentage Gigawatt Of 14% Consumed 5% The Centres In Rose Of 2015 Metered To Electricity
Data centre annual energy consumption increased by 32% last year — the equivalent of an additional 200,000 homes being powered, an expert has said.
Figures from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) lay bare the huge energy required to power data centres, which now number 70 in Ireland, predominantly on the east coast around Dublin.
The CSO said that electricity consumption by data centres increased by 32% between 2020 and 2021, and that the increase between January-March 2015 and October-December 2021 was 265%.
The percentage of metered electricity consumed by data centres rose from 5% in 2015 to 14% in 2021, an increase of 2,757 gigawatt hours, said the CSO.
Environment and Climate Division statisticians Niamh Shanahan said there has been a steady increase from quarter to quarter.
"The increase in consumption was driven by a combination of existing data centres using more electricity and new data centres being added to the grid," she said.
Dr Paul Deane, senior research fellow at MaREI, the SFI Research Centre for Energy, Climate, and Marine at University College Cork (UCC), said the growth in data centre energy consumption in 2021 was the same as adding more than 200,000 homes to the power system.
"The power system was under considerable stress in 2021 with extended outages at major power plant and it is clear from the CSO numbers that new data centres added to this difficulty," he said.
"As we move through the current energy crisis and ongoing climate crisis, the Government must focus energy and emission reductions. Growing energy use while reducing emissions in line with national targets is not a circle than can be easily squared."
Questions around data centres and Ireland’s ability to handle the massive energy needed to power them have turned into a hot political, economic, and environmental issue in the past couple of years.
Ireland had seven system alerts, previously known as amber alerts, on the electricity grid between December 2020 and October 2021, but fell short of declaring any red alerts.
To put it in context, EirGrid said that between 2010 and 2019, there were 13 system alerts overall.
Environmental non-governmental organisation An Taisce has claimed that local authorities and An Bord Pleanála are granting permission for data centres on a case-by-case basis, without linking the cumulative effects of the energy required to run them all.
A proposed moratorium on data centre construction failed to pass in the Dáil last year.
Last September, the Oireachtas Climate Committee heard Dublin has become the the largest data centre hub in Europe, accounting for 25% of the overall European industry market share at the end of 2018.
Maynooth University geography lecturer Dr Patrick Bresnahan said: "Data centres currently represent 11% of grid capacity, but Eirgrid estimates this will be 28% by 2030 based on existing connections.
"If all proposed data centre projects were connected, this figure could be as high as 70% of grid capacity by 2030. This is compared with 2% of electricity consumed by data centres worldwide."