Pádraig Hoare: Rampant consumerism, not data centres, at the heart of energy woes

The Taoiseach can't guarantee the lights will stay on this winter and the fingers are being pointed at data centres, but should we be looking inwards too?

Until renewable energy such as wind can take care of the heavy lifting towards the tail end of the decade, we are in for a bumpy ride when it comes to our grid. File picture: David Creedon / Anzenberger

It's the year 2021, and the Taoiseach is being asked in Dáil Éireann if he can guarantee the lights will not go off in Ireland this winter. 

This is not a scenario from a bad made-for-TV movie with has-been or ne'er-were actors, but an actual query from Labour leader Alan Kelly on Wednesday.

It may sound like an absurd question for the leader of the Labour Party to ask, but given the stark warnings of recent days that Ireland's electricity grid is so stretched it may lead to rolling blackouts, it is a legitimate ask. 

Even more disturbing was Micheál Martin's inability to dismiss the notion, only saying the Government will do everything it can to avoid such a scenario. 

Until renewable energy such as wind can take care of the heavy lifting towards the tail end of the decade, we are in for a bumpy ride when it comes to our grid.

As reported by Irish Examiner business editor Eamon Quinn this week, electricity supply will remain tight for many years to come, according to the Commission for Regulation of Utilities (CRU) and operator EirGrid.

"System alerts during mid-winter cannot be ruled out even as risks have declined with the return of generators at Whitegate and Huntstown in the coming weeks. Amber alerts could take the form of warnings to large users to power down and manage their consumption over certain periods," he reported.

How did it come to this? The culprit of the day is data centres, giant usurpers of energy across the land, leeching mind-blowing amounts of electricity, unimaginable quantities of water, all the while churning out harmful emissions to the environment. 

The culprit of the day is data centres, giant usurpers of energy across the land, leeching mind-blowing amounts of electricity, unimaginable quantities of water, all the while churning out harmful emissions to the environment. File picture

But are data centres, and other huge emissions drivers and energy consumption behemoths, the real guilty party? Shouldn't we be looking a bit more inwardly than finding the latest scapegoat?

Take your average smartphone in Ireland. 

It is not a stretch to believe there are hundreds if not thousands of pictures, hundreds more obsolete Google docs, thousands of stored emails, funny videos of cats falling out of trees, podcasts saved for the evening walk, favourite playlists saved for the day's gym session, as well as app after app such as Instagram or Facebook to scroll during and after work, on each one.

Where do we think all that data is stored? 

There is no magical place that exists outside the space-time continuum to host our lust for instant information. When we talk of the cloud, it is not an actual giant ball of cumulus matter, with a soft centre lovingly caressing all our collective phone secrets and information. 

Give it 20 – nay, even 10 – years ago and a simple Google search for the word "cloud" would have given you a breakdown of the white cotton-like natural phenomenon that pervades our skies on the first search result.

Type the word in today, and it takes until the middle of the third page of a Google search to bring up a definition of what we all learned in our first days of geography class in primary school.

The first two and a half pages are either definitions of "the cloud", the non-corporeal yet exponentially growing data storage concept that keeps our digital footprints safe, or else firms offering cloud services.

Legendary American jazz and soul poet Gil Scott-Heron, criticising consumerism in 1980s America, said: "All consumers know that when the producer names the tune, the consumer has got to dance."

We seem to have turned that right on its head when it comes to data – the consumer's demand for more, more, more has led gleeful producers to try and keep up. 

It's not as if we couldn't see this problem coming. Our obsession with consumption has been staring us in the face for generations. 

Remember the 1980s, when you'd be hard-pressed to find many homes in Ireland with two cars in a driveway? Take a look around any housing estate in suburban Ireland built in the 1970s or 1980s, and you'll now find not only driveways but footpaths choc-a-bloc with cars, one for each member of the family.

we tut when we see the inordinate amount of packaging and boxes that come from our Amazon and Wish deliveries, until the next time we want something quickly and without effort. File picture

Remember when it was a novelty to get on a plane, and when it was only your neighbours with the high-powered jobs that could jet off to the sun every summer, when you were content with a week in Banna Beach? These days, it's cheaper to fly on a plane to foreign shores in many cases than it is to take a train within Ireland.

This isn't just anecdotal evidence or flawed recollection – the evidence is there. According to University College Cork lecturer in sustainable energy and energy systems modelling Dr Hannah Daly, the number of cars on our roads has tripled since 1990.

CO2 emissions have grown nearly as fast as the size of the car fleet, while SUVs now make up half of new car sales now, up from 13% a decade ago, according to her research.

While cars are getting somewhat more efficient, the savings are far outstripped by growth in demand. Oil demand in transport has grown nearly 2.5 times since 1990, with oil demand in freight tripling.

"In 1986, less than a quarter of primary school pupils travelled to school by car. That share is now 60% and increasing. For secondary students, the share has increased from 11% to 42%. Only 2% of secondary school students now cycle to school, when in 1986, more students actually cycled than went to school by car."

We fly 'fresh' produce from around the world

We fly "fresh" produce from around the world to satisfy our healthy personal eating habits, and we tut when we see the inordinate amount of packaging and boxes that come from our Amazon and Wish deliveries, until the next time we want something quickly and without effort.

Generation Xers and early Millennials were aghast at oil spills in our oceans in the 1980s and 1990s, while Millennials and Generation Zers wince in 2021 at the disturbing swathes of plastic killing our marine life. 

Yet, we'll continue buying our bottles of cola en masse, simply because we can. It's convenient, and it satisfies what we want in the here and now. 

We are outraged at giant cubes of waste and plastic being sent to Asia by rich Western nations over the decades, but are we heading down the same road when it comes to data centres? 

We don't want them here, leeching from our precious terrain, but if not here, then where? 

Is our moral indignation assuaged by sending them to less wealthy countries? If so, that is a disturbing thought – yet another example of Western imperialism wrapped up in a modern bow.

Ireland needs to get serious about its energy problem, and that means dealing with the giant data centre elephant hogging the small room. But if it comes at the expense of others, then we are as guilty as those who have led us to the climate crisis in the first place.