Data centres are “toxic waste of 21st century” says PBP

People Before Profit have called for a levy of 20 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh) on the electricity they consume, and for the levy proceeds to fund €500 electricity credits for households.

The party said that relative to the amount of power used by data centres, it would translate into a €1.5 billion windfall, which would then be turned into €500 worth of energy credits for households.

Party leader Richard Boyd Barrett said “data centres consume a quarter of our electricity, almost as much electricity as every home in the state. Yet data centres pay just half the €0.40 per kilowatt hour average price paid by households. This is completely unacceptable.”

“Households in Ireland pay the highest electricity prices in the EU, 38% higher than the EU average. Friends of the Earth estimate that the average household paid an estimated additional €263 for their electricity in the 2021 to 2023 due to the upward pressure data centres put on electricity prices,” the Dún Laoghaire TD said.

“Our proposed levy on data centres would raise more than enough to pay for a €500 annual electricity credit for every household and an additional €500 electricity credit for households with people with disabilities. This is precisely the sort of measure we need to take some of the intolerable cost-of-living pressures off people.”

Dublin South-West TD Paul Murphy said “data centres are the toxic waste of the 21st century. Their rapid development is driving massive increases in greenhouse gas emissions and accelerating global temperature rise towards imminent breach of the dangerous 1.5 C above preindustrial level.”

“The policies of successive governments have resulted in Ireland having over 120 data centres operating in the State, a concentration that is at least 10 times higher than the European per capita average. In June the UN was moved to state ‘Ireland offers a cautionary example of local grid stress from concentrated digital infrastructure’. What this and previous governments have allowed is beyond unsustainable; it is utterly reckless,” Murphy said.

“Opposition to new data centres is emerging rapidly across the country. People do not want any more data centres taking our electricity, gas and water and creating environmental nuisance and damage. An immediate ban on new data centres is essential to stop the accumulation of more of this toxic waste,” Murphy said.

“We know that households in Ireland pay the highest electricity prices in the EU. But that has not always been the case. Our motion notes that up to the end of the 1990s, the ESB, operating with a not-for-profit mandate, was a world class energy company delivering low-cost electricity.

The People Before Profit TD said “that not-for-profit mandate was replaced with a commercial mandate in 2001 and that has been an unmitigated disaster for the affordability of electricity and for the development of renewable energy. That’s why we need to renationalise the electricity sector, under the ESB, and give the ESB key mandates to provide affordable electricity and to tackle the climate crisis.”