Homes, hospitals and businesses could face gas shortages during a severe winter if growing demand from data centres is allowed to place further pressure on the network, Dublin MEP Lynn Boylan has warned.
The Sinn Féin representative was responding to a new report from the Commission for Regulation of Utilities which, she said, found that connecting data centres to the gas grid could cause shortages by the winter of 2032/33.
Under the proposed arrangement, data centres would pay less for gas on the condition that their supply could be interrupted when demand on the network is particularly high.
Boylan said the gas network might be able to meet the additional demand during a mild winter, but could struggle during colder than average conditions.
“Given that 27 per cent of households connected to the gas grid are in arrears, it is another insult to people that the data centres which are part of driving up the cost of energy are being offered discounts, while households have been left in the cold by the Government,” she said.
Boylan criticised the proposal to connect data centres to the gas network as a means of reducing the pressure they place on the electricity system.
“It is ridiculous that the CRU’s proposal to ease the drain on our electricity grid from data centres is to plug them into the gas grid, rather than even proposing a moratorium on connecting the centres to the grid,” she said.
The Dublin MEP described the potential gas demand from the facilities as “off the charts”.
“Seventeen data centres would have a peak gas demand equivalent to six 500 megawatt combined cycle gas turbine generators,” she said.
“For context, the slightly smaller 445 megawatt Whitegate generator in Co Cork provides power for 445,000 homes.”
Boylan also warned that the projected increase in gas demand could be used by the Government to justify the development of a liquefied natural gas terminal.
“The cheerleaders of data centres in Government will use this as an excuse to manufacture consent for an expensive and destructive LNG terminal,” she said.
“Instead of saying to big tech that enough is enough, they want to give these companies anything they want, regardless of the impact on the public and the climate.”
Data centres have already placed significant additional demand on Ireland’s electricity network. Boylan said the Government had responded to periods of pressure on the system by spending hundreds of millions of euro on temporary emergency generation.
“Rather than pushing back on the demands of big tech companies and their data centres when their usage pushed our grid into amber alerts, which mean there is an increased risk of blackouts, they instead spent hundreds of millions of public money on temporary emergency generation to avert the worst blackouts,” she said.
Boylan accused the Government of repeating the mistakes made in its management of the electricity system.
“The Government’s approach to the data centre question is reckless and risks harming development and investment in other key areas, including housing and infrastructure,” she said.