Government Burying Their Heads in the Sand on Data Centres
Government Burying Their Heads in the Sand on Data Centres - The Labour Party
Labour’s spokesperson for Climate, Energy & Environment, Ciarán Ahern TD, has said that Government is failing to recognise the impact of data centres on household energy bills and our decarbonisation efforts.
Speaking during Labour’s motion on data centres, energy use and climate change in the Dáil today, Deputy Ahern called for a levy on data centres to mitigate the higher costs they impose on ordinary consumers as well as a moratorium on new connections until we can be sure they aren’t impacting on our climate targets.
Deputy Ahern said:
“A recent report from Friends of the Earth laid bare the consequences that data centres have had on household energy bills. A cumulative €715 million was added to household bills between 2015 and 2023 as a direct result of data centre energy demands pushing up prices, and it’s projected that a further €1.5 billion could be the price households pay for data centres over the next decade.
“This is at a time when just last week the CRU publishes figures showing 500,000 household bills in arrears. The increased and inflexible energy demands of data centres are pushing Ireland’s energy costs higher and higher and it is ordinary households who are paying the price for this.
“Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and the Independents are utterly failing on climate and energy. They’re pursuing policies that will lead to more fossil fuel use and ever-increasing bills for households. We’re halfway through the year and we still have no Climate Action Plan; they’re building an LNG terminal which will see us importing dirty fracked gas; and they’re pushing through private wires legislation to enable further data centre development.
“Data centres already consume around 22% of the electricity in this state. That’s projected to grow to more than 30% by 2030 and to 55% before long on their current trajectory. That is extraordinary. It would mean data centres consume more than every household, every school, every hospital, every small business, every farm and every factory in the country combined. Data centres are already soaking up more or less all of the renewable energy we’re producing, meaning it isn’t going to sectors that we urgently need to decarbonise like transport, industry and home heating.
“Despite all of this, the Government is insisting on green-lighting more and more of these energy guzzlers. They have their heads buried in the sand. They’re allowing our entire electricity system to become increasingly organised around the demands of a relatively small number of large corporate users and their interests rather than those of ordinary households and the urgent need to decarbonise our economy.
“The constant refrain from Government is that data centres are important employment facilitators, but the figures they’re relying on don’t stand up to scrutiny. A recent Department of Enterprise-commissioned report made the ludicrous claim that data centres enable almost 900,000 jobs, but you could say the same thing about virtually any sector. The actual figure in terms of the employment they offer is 19,500, and the vast majority of those are in construction and temporary. In terms of direct employment, data centres provide little more than 3,000 jobs. The Government’s report also conveniently leaves out the fact that much of the push for data centre growth is to facilitate AI development, which we know is putting jobs at risk.”
Deputy Ahern continued:
“It’s bitterly disappointing that Government is not supporting our motion. Ours is the responsible approach. We recognise that data centres are important for our digital infrastructure and industrial strategy, but we have to be honest about and mindful of the costs.
“Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Independents failure to recognise these costs and take climate action seriously is driving up energy costs for ordinary, hard-pressed households and is likely to see Ireland incur massive climate fines that will ultimately be paid for through higher bills. We need to see a moratorium on new data centre construction until enough renewable energy comes on stream, and a levy should be imposed on their energy usage to recover the higher electricity costs now being imposed on households and small businesses.”