The Oireachtas Committee on Artificial Intelligence will today hear calls for a moratorium on new data centres amid concerns about their impact on Ireland’s electricity grid, climate targets and household energy bills.
Friends of the Earth Ireland is due to address the committee as at least 700MW of proposed data centre development progresses through the planning system across the country.
The environmental organisation said the developments could increase Ireland’s peak electricity demand by 11 per cent, which it claimed would be equivalent to adding the electricity needs of a county the size of Cork to the grid within the next two to three years.
It will urge the Government to introduce a moratorium on data centres and establish a framework determining which major developments should be prioritised for connections to the electricity grid.
Friends of the Earth Ireland is expected to argue that the need for further large-scale data centre expansion has not been clearly demonstrated.
The organisation also claims the additional electricity demand could prolong Ireland’s reliance on fossil fuels, increase household bills and make it more difficult to decarbonise public services.
Rosi Leonard, the organisation’s data centre campaign lead, said the current model of expansion carried significant consequences.
“The model of hyperscale data centre expansion in Ireland comes with real costs for our electricity system, our climate, our energy bills, our ability to decarbonise our public services and, crucially, the communities who have to live beside these developments,” she said.
“These impacts are being baked in by current Government policy.”
Friends of the Earth Ireland chief executive Deirdre Duffy said the Government’s approach was at odds with its commitment to move away from fossil fuels.
“The most serious impact of this extra demand is the push towards new expensive fossil infrastructure such as the LNG terminal planned for Shannon,” she said.
The committee hearing comes ahead of an upcoming vote by Kildare County Council on a proposal to rezone a significant area of land in Naas that is currently reserved exclusively for data centre use.
Campaign group Naas Data Centre Awareness is seeking a moratorium on new data centres in Kildare, citing the potential strain on the local electricity grid and other resources.
The group claims that one proposed development in the area, the Herbata data centre, could triple the electricity demand of the entire county.