Irish Datacenters Now Consume 23% of the Country's Electricity
Irish datacenters now guzzle 23% of the country's electricity
I report that Irish datacenters now account for 23% of the nation's total electricity consumption, a figure that jumped 10% in 2025 despite a moratorium on new grid connections in Dublin. These massive server farms now use more power than all urban households combined, prompting new regulations requiring operators to provide backup generators and feed power back to the grid when needed.
Datacenter consumption has grown every single year without exception, more than doubling between 2015 and 2019, and tripling again between 2019 and 2025.
- cadamsdotcom
Just to be contrarian: what we're talking about is "electricity use from economic activity". This should be good for Ireland but they'll need to build energy capacity to keep up.
It's misplaced to be angry about datacenters themselves. There IS value being created, or people wouldn't use the tools.
Construction creates jobs, manufacturing the machines in the buildings is a huge global industry; the value people gain in their work and play is considered worthwhile by them individually.
In the aggregate it all happens in a boring building shaped like a box, mostly built out of the way for economic reasons, and which if well engineered can be pretty efficient for what it does for the human race.
- mrtksn
Isn't this a similar issue of doctors raised by taxpayers money doing hair transplant and cosmetic surgeries instead of working in much less profitable hospitals with sick people or European scientists and engineers risen by public education working in American tech companies or super rich people from all over the world buying all the homes in London which is valuable not because of its resources but because of the people there and now causing housing problems?
They all have the same issues:
1) Pricing that doesn't account for externalities.
2) Those who bear the consequences are not those who reap the benefits
- pizzafeelsright
That is about 3% of California's total energy usage
Or about 11,000 GWh which is about 4% of California which means without the theatrics:
California has 4x more data centers than Ireland.
California: ~810 watts per person.
(278,000 GWh / 39.4 million people)
Ireland: ~690 watts per person.
(32,000 GWh / 5.3 million people)
We have air conditioning and that may be why we use more POWAH
- HtmlProgrammer
My electricity costs 34 cent per Kw/h and I can’t afford solar panels or a renovation to air to water heating while the government insists we shouldn’t use oil / coal anymore nor logs or turf to heat our homes
edit: I live in Ireland
- alephnerd
Ireland has been a data center hub for decades - especially thanks to the IDA successfully wooing Microsoft back in 2007 [0], and it helped played a role in helping Ireland partially recover from the AIB and housing collapse back in 2008 and become the tech hub it is today. Heck, it was the corneestone of the IDA's tech FDI policy back then [1].
Heck, Google itself only expanded in Ireland back in the 2000s in large part because they worked on acquiring Colt to build their European CoLo in Ireland, and data centers now represent around 18% of Ireland's total GVA [2].
[0] - https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/hyperscalers/microsoft-p...
[1] - https://www.siliconrepublic.com/science/ireland-has-the-pote...
[2] - https://www.iiea.com/blog/data-centres-in-ireland-the-state-...
- cbmuser
Ireland consumes roughly 40 TWh per year, that’s less than the production of four EPR reactors or two times Hinkley Point C.
The country could easily solve its electricity problems with nuclear power. They can ask South Korea for help who built four reactors in UAE with 12 years which now provide 25% of the country’s electricity.
- hudo
And got electricity price hike last year, and now few weeks ago again, from ~25c kwh, to around 35c kwh! They say its reliance on fossil fuels.
Not just that, think Ireland has one of the most expensive broadbands in the EU!
- bawana
A similar thing happened in greece, but not with data centers. The railroads, airports,shipping ports were privatized and bought by foreign investors. Now the money from those services leaves the country making the greek economy poorer and weaker.
- illwrks
A few years ago I was reading a recruitment report and was surprised to learn that Ireland is a large source of data scientists, so it’s no surprise really
- Waterluvian
How do the data center people protect their expensive data center from colossal rate hikes? They can’t just pick up and move.
So has Ireland made an agreement with them in some way?
I’m just imagining that if there’s no local value for three beyond some temp construction jobs and a handful of service jobs, surely they can just bilk them until they leave. So I imagine data center companies only locate where they can get very safe terms?