Ireland embraced data centers that the AI boom needs. Now they’re consuming too much of its energy
CLONDALKIN, Ireland (AP) — Dozens of massive data centers humming at the outskirts of Dublin are consuming more electricity than all of the urban homes in Ireland and starting to wear out the warm welcome that brought them here.
Now, a country that made itself a computing factory for Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft and TikTok is wondering whether it was all worth it as tech giants look around the world to build even more data centers to fuel the next wave of artificial intelligence.
Fears of rolling blackouts led Ireland’s grid operator to halt new data centers near Dublin until 2028. These huge buildings and their powerful computers last year consumed 21% of the nation’s electricity, according to official records. No other country has reported a higher burden to the International Energy Agency.
Not only that, but Ireland is still heavily reliant on burning fossil fuels to generate electricity, despite a growing number of wind farms sprouting across the countryside. Further data center expansion threatens Ireland’s goals to sharply cut planet-warming emissions.
Energy researcher Paul Deane of Univ Dublin’s data center limits, said :
Ireland is a microcosm of what many countries could be facing over the next decade, particularly with the growth of AI,
Twenty-six-year-old activist Darragh Adelaide lives in a working-class Dublin suburb just across a busy motorway from Grange Castle Business Park, one of Ireland’s biggest data center clusters. It could get even bigger were Adelaide not a thorn in the side of Google’s expansion plans.
Adelaide said,
It’s kind of an outrageous number of data centers,
“People have started to make the connection between the amount of electricity they’re using and electricity prices going up.”
Ireland has attracted global tech companies since the “Celtic Tiger” boom at the turn of the 21st century. Tax incentives, a highly skilled, English-speaking workforce and the country’s membership in the European Union have all contributed to making the tech sector a central part of the Irish economy. The island is also a node for undersea cables that extend to the U.S., Britain, Iceland and mainland Europe.
Nearly all of the data centers sit on the edge of Dublin, where their proximity to the capital city facilitates online financial transactions and other activities that require fast connections. Data center computers run hot, but compared to other parts of the world, Ireland’s cool temperatures make it easier to keep them from overheating without drawing in as much water.
Still, buildings that for years went mostly unnoticed have attracted unwanted attention as their power demands surged while Irish householders pay some of Europe’s highest electricity bills. Ireland’s Environmental Protection Agency has also flagged concerns about nitrogen oxide pollution from data centers’ on-site generators — typically gas or diesel turbines — affecting areas near Dublin.
A crackdown began in 2021, spurred by projections that data centers are on pace to take up one third of Ireland’s electricity in this decade. Regulators declared that Dublin had hit its limits and could no longer plug more data centers into its grid. The government urged tech companies to look outside the capital and find ways to supply their own power.
University College Dublin researcher Patrick Brodie, said :
What’s happening in Ireland is the politics of basically what happens when you build too many of these things,
“Even though people have recognized for a while that data centers are energy hogs, there hasn’t really been so many of these moments where, effectively, Ireland issued a red alert.”
Adelaide was a child when Microsoft opened Grange Castle’s first data center in 2009, but enormous complexes built by Amazon, Google, Microsoft and other companies have since expanded around the ruined castle that anchors the business park. They have their own modern fortifications of high fences, surveillance cameras and guard houses, and don’t display their corporate logos.
In June, Adelaide’s campaign against data centers helped get him elected to a seat on the South Dublin County Council for the leftist People Not Profits Party. The council soon after rejected Google’s plan to build another data center. Google appealed the decision in September.ersity College Cork.
Adelaide said,
It was only going to employ around 50 people,
“It would have been a massive cost to the local area and to Ireland in general with very little benefit, which is kind of how the tax haven system works.”
The backlash from Dublin-area local planning authorities — combined with stricter, if sometimes contradictory, guidance from the national government — has frustrated data center developers.
One fully-built data center from Texas-based Digital Realty is sitting idle at Grange Castle while it awaits permission to connect to the electricity grid. The company sells space within its data centers for clients such as banks, email providers and social media platforms. It says it lacks a grid connection despite contracting for enough renewable energy to power all of its Irish data centers.
Dermot Lahey, who directs Digital Realty’s data center implementation in Ireland, speaking inside a cavernous empty data hall, said :
When we look at artificial intelligence, when we look at new technologies coming along the line, the basic requirement for all of those is power infrastructure,
Ireland has all the elements to make it a “great home for AI expansion,” he said.
Lahey said,
What’s preventing us from being able to leverage that is the fact that the power constraints that we have, or the power moratorium that we have, is greatly impacting our ability to provide space for customers,
READ the latest news shaping the data centre market at Data Centre Central
Ireland embraced data centers that the AI boom needs. Now they’re consuming too much of its energy, source
