Ireland - The EU's Data Repository

Uploaded on 2024-12-31 in TECHNOLOGY--Developments, NEWS-Cybersecurity News, GOVERNMENT-National, FREE TO VIEW

Ireland is fast becoming the big US technology companies' favourite 'data dumping ground' in the European Union. New research explains how companies, like Amazon and Meta are investing in the the cloud storage sector in Ireland as AI drives an expansion of data centres, using electricity generated by fossil fuels.

This is according to a Report by University College Cork (UCC) commissioned by Friends of the Earth, looking into the impact of data centres on Ireland, which has attracted major US companies to locate there because of its favourable corporate tax regime, compared to other EU nations.

Indeed, the growth of the cloud storage sector in Ireland is so rapid it is threatening the country’s legally binding decarbonisation commitments.

The rise of AI has increased demand for more energy to power for high performance data centres, however Gartner predicts that 40% of operators will face constraints in power availability and this issue has meant that big AI developers including AWS and Google are now using nuclear power.

The UCC report says that electricity demand from data centres had grown annually by 23% since 2015, compared to less than half a percent for other industries.

The study also showed that data centres in Ireland use a fifth of the country's electricity supply.

Previous figures from Ireland's Central Statistics Office suggested that electricity use by data centres increased by a third between 2021 and 2022, and 400% from 2015, with sites chewing through 18% of the nation's electricity by 2022.

Data Storage & Climate Change

The increase in data centre demand could knock Ireland off course for its climate action plan, the report warned. All of the wind generated by Ireland between 2017 and 2023 was outpaced by data centre energy growth, meaning that investment in power generation had not contributed to net reductions in fossil fuel use.

The expansion of data centres in Ireland will come increasingly under the spotlight with the new EU AI Act, which requires countries to publish figures on energy use for general purpose AI.The EU is also finalising rules to monitor the energy performance of data centres, including their energy and water footprint.

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