Green Party calls for data centres to be taxed to pay for upgrades to national grid

'In the last five years, data centres added, on average, €360 to household bills.'

Data centres should be taxed to pay for improvements to the national grid, the Green Party has said.

Green Party deputy leader and party spokesperson on infrastructure and public expenditure, Cllr Hazel Chu is calling for a levy on data centres to be introduced that would cover the costs of grid infrastructure.

Households will face another increase in their electricity bills from October, after the energy regulator approved higher network charges to fund upgrades to Ireland’s electricity grid, adding further pressure to those already struggling with the cost of living. 

Data centres now consume about 23% of Ireland’s electricity, one of the highest proportions anywhere in the world.

Ms Chu said household consumers were in effect subsidising tech giants.

“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."

Ms Chu said the data centre tax would be on both on the use of electricity and gas and would be used to improve grid infrastructure.

“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, this would raise approximately €84m per year on current consumption, before accounting for future growth. 

"That money would be ringfenced to pay for the improvements to the national grid that are necessary because of data centre expansion here.

“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.”

While electricity use by all other consumers increased by 2% over the year, demand from data centres rose by 10%.