Storyline
For years, Ireland has been embracing major U.S. tech giants, building data centers that consume massive amounts of power. But demands on the national grid have threatened blackouts, and experts and activists are trying to find an ecological compromise.
The International Energy Agency expects the data centers will consume one-third of Ireland’s electricity by 2026—a far greater burden than anywhere else in Europe.
Fears of rolling blackouts led Ireland’s grid operator to place an unofficial moratorium on new data centers near Dublin until 2028.
Darragh Adelaide, a South Dublin County Council member, expresses the strains the data centers are placing on resources.
He says, “When you look at the electricity use in Ireland, 21 percent is used by data centers, which is a massive amount. When you look at water use, each one uses between 500,000 liters and five million. It gets particularly bad when it’s a very warm day or a set of warm days. And so, when you’re looking at and comparing the resources that they use, the amount of carbon they produce to the amount of jobs they provide for the local community, I don’t think it’s worth having in this local area. 40 of the 80 data centers in Ireland are located right here.”
Adelaide also voices concerns about the vast amounts of users’ personal data stored in these data centers and questions how important it is to retain this information.
“When you look at what the data centers are actually storing, it’s a lot of terabytes of personal information on what sites you go to and how long you spend scrolling on a TikTok, that sort of thing,” he says. “It’s a lot of personal information, that’s not necessary, stored so it could be sold on to marketers and used for AI and that sort of stuff. I think the reality is that data isn’t necessary. If we have a moratorium on data centers, it will force these big companies on maybe not storing so much personal information on people.”
This article was provided by The Associated Press.
Script
[Meta data center outside Dublin]
[Data center]
[Darragh Adelaide standing outside a data center]
Darragh Adelaide (interview): “When you look at the electricity use in Ireland, 21 per cent is used by data centers, which is a massive amount. When you look at water use, each one uses between 500,000 litres and five million. It gets particularly bad when it’s a very warm day or a set of warm days. and So when you’re looking at and comparing the resources that they use, the amount of carbon they produce to the amount of jobs they provide for the local community, I don’t think it’s worth having in this local area, 40 of the 80 data centers in Ireland are located right here.”
[Meta data center outside Dublin]
[Digital Realty data center in Dublin]
Darragh Adelaide (interview): “When you look at what the data centers are actually storing, it’s a lot of terrabytes of personal information on what sites you go to and how long you spend scrolling on a TikTok, that sort of thing. It’s a lot of personal information, that’s not necessary, stored so it could be sold on to marketers and used for AI and that sort of stuff. I think the reality is that data isn’t necessary. If we have a moratorium on data centers, it will force these big companies on maybe not storing so much personal information on people.”
[Logo of Digital Realty hanging inside the entrance hall]
[Dermot Lahey entering an empty data hall]
[Emergency Operating Procedure manual]
Dermot Lahey (interview): “The reason why we’re currently standing in an empty data hall is that under the current constraints on the electricity market, we’re unable to get a power connection that enables us to install new customers in this data hall.”
[Connected data servers inside a different data hall of Digital Realty]
Dermot Lahey (interview): “Because of the idea, or because the fact that we’re constrained power wise, and again, that forms the backdrop to the conversation of the Irish market place, we find more and more customers bypass Ireland as part of that conversation.”
[Digital Realty data center]
[Wind farm in Offaly County]
Kevin O’Donovan (interview): “The target in Ireland is eighty per cent of all of our electricity demand, coming from renewables. And that includes the projected growth by airgrid of the data centers being added to the mix.”
[Protest banner hanging outside the headquarters of an activist group]
[Headquarters of Lemanaghan Bog Heritage and Conservation Group]
[Newspaper front page hanging on a wall inside the headquarters]
[Peat burning inside a fireplace]
[Activists sitting around a table with a map]
Seamus Corcoran (interview): “We’re opposed to data centers in a sense that they absorb enough electricity that could be used in the economy otherwise. So data centers are commercial, it doesn’t benefit as far as employment is concerned and as far as the environment is concerned either.”
[Irish Parliament]
Ossian Smyth (interview): “In 2022, we came up with a new policy and said, ok, data centers need to take into account security and supply, they shouldn’t cause power cuts and they should also contribute towards meeting our climate goals. So how do you do that? We said to data centers: ‘you must provide full backup for your system. And in the event that we have power cuts, we’re going to turn you off first before we turn off other power users and you’re going to revert to your backup.”
[Irish Parliament]
This script was provided by The Associated Press.
