Almost one-third of Ireland's energy supply used in data centres, environmental campaigners warn

Amazon has been granted planning permission to build three data centres in Dublin, bring the total number of data centres from the tech giant to six.

Ireland is heading towards 30% of the country's energy supply going to data centres, according to the Chief executive of Friends of the Earth Ireland. 

It comes just as Amazon has been granted planning permission to build three data centres in Dublin, bringing the total number of data centres from the tech giant to six. 

The plans were lodged for the site at its data campus centre near Mulhuddart last December. The three buildings will carry a combined power load of 73 megawatts.  

Oisín Coughlan said the decision of Fingal local authority to approve Amazon's planning permission explained that the level of energy use was comparable to the 84 megawatts generated by the Mount Lucas wind farm. 

He pointed out that plans to bring Tarbet Power Station in Kerry back online this winter would generate 150 megawatts. 

“So half of Tarbert will be dedicated to keeping these data centres going rather than keeping our lights going," he told RTÉ radio's Morning Ireland on Wednesday. 

Mr Coughlan said that opponents were not saying there should not be any data centres at all, there was just concern that Ireland was already heading towards ten times the European average, even before the Fingal approval.

“Of course we’re going to have data centres, we just don't need to have every data centre that's going in Europe. The other country that has anything like ours is Singapore – 14 percent. We're heading to 30 percent. It's already more than all the urban homes in Ireland, twice as many as all the rural homes in Ireland. That's the power the data centres are using now and we're heading to double that in the next ten years.” 

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Friends of the Earth submitted an observation to the planning application for the three data centres that this would "lock us into our dependency" on fossil fuels. 

“It's a triple threat. It's a threat to our energy security, the security of our power system, a threat to our pollution limits. And to be honest, it's a threat to the credibility of this government on climate," Mr Coughlan said. 

The Government had announced a moratorium on data centres around Dublin because of the risk to the power grid, he said. 

“And here we are. This is driving a coach and horses through that if this is allowed to go ahead. And the reason it might be able to go ahead is because they already have a grid connection at the site for an existing data centre," Mr Coughlan added. 

If the three new data centres go ahead it will drive up demand for gas and fossil fuels. 

“Because even if they say they're going to use renewables, it means that there's less renewables for the rest of us. So the rest of us have to use gas or coal from Moneypoint to keep the lights on," Mr Coughlan said.