Chu calls for data centres to “pay their share” with new tax

Green Party councillor and infrastructure spokesperson Hazel Chu has said that data centres, not households, should be paying for grid modernisation and expansion. 

The Pembroke councillor said that a levy on data centres should be introduced, which takes the burden off households.

Ireland now has the dubious honour of having the highest consumer electricity prices in Europe, in no small part thanks to the proliferation of data centres.

It is estimated that by 2030, as much as 30% of Ireland’s electricity usage will be taken up by data centres.

Data centres have become a stick for opposition parties to beat the government with, and the Greens have attempted to use the events of this summer, which have seen record-high temperatures, wildfires and drought, as an attempt to get climate politics back on the agenda.

Chu said, “data centres are consuming a quarter of our electricity; it is time they paid their fair share.”

“Irish households should not be subsidising the massive energy consumption of tech giants. In the last five years, data centres added on average €360 to household bills and from October the CCPC says we’ll all have to pay €41.25 each year to pay for costs of building, maintaining, and upgrading Ireland’s electricity infrastructure.”

Chu said, “if you consume enormous amounts of the country’s energy, you should make an appropriate contribution towards the cost.”

Chu said that the data centre tax would be on both on the use of electricity and gas, and is taking inspiration from the American state of Virginia in recent weeks.

“We are proposing an electricity consumption levy of €0.011/kWh on electricity consumed by data centres. Based on a similar system that was recently introduced in Virginia in July, this would raise approximately €84 million per year on current consumption, before accounting for future growth. And to go one step further than Virginia, we are putting a levy on gas consumption too,” she said.

“Gas Networks Ireland data shows that large non-power users consumed almost 8.9 TWh of gas in 2025. Yet we don’t even know how much of that gas is being consumed by data centres, that is simply unacceptable. The Commission for Regulation of Utilities is now warning that new very large industrial users, primarily data centres and electricity generators, could have a major impact on Ireland’s gas security.”

Chu stated, “if Ireland has to plan, reinforce and protect its energy infrastructure because of these enormous new demands, the companies creating that demand should pay towards it.”

“That money would be ringfenced to pay for the improvements to the national grid that are necessary because of data centre expansion here,” she explained.

The Dublin City Council member said “the government has created a national energy model that hoards grid capacity for data servers while families face rising network charges and inflated bills. All we’re asking is that these large energy users pay their share. We cannot keep socialising the costs and privatising the profits.”