“Unholy alliance of state and vested business interests are leading us to disaster on data centre policy”- Bríd Smith TD
Reacting to statements from the office of the planning regulator who has said that a proposed ban on data centres in South Dublin was without “strategic justification”, People Before Profit TD Bríd Smith said the regulators views were “myopic and divorced from the reality of climate crisis and energy security”.
She said a clear alliance of “hugely powerful business interests represented by Cloud Ireland as well as several state actors such as the IDA and Enterprise Ireland” had combined to stop any restrictions on the proliferation of data centres. The result, the TD said, will be a disaster for Ireland’s climate targets and energy policy.
Deputy Smith said: “We already have a situation where 14% of the state’s electricity is consumed by these centres, the global average for most states is between 1 and 4. We are an extreme outlier and the plan here is for up to 30% of total electricity output by 2030 going to these centres. It is utterly unsustainable and will guarantee failure to meet climate targets never mind keeping the lights on in the coming years.”
Cllr Madeleine Johansson, who had proposed the motion which saw SDCC pass the ban originally said: “It’s disturbing to see state bodies justify continued data centre expansion with fantasy arguments based on no science or concern about their impact on climate targets or on our ability to keep people’s electricity on in the coming years. We have a climate and energy crisis looming but the attitude of several sate actors is “whatever big tech wants big tech must get” regardless of the consequences”.
She said claims that we can supply renewable energy in the coming years to whatever number of data centres are required was an utter fantasy and that the reality was we need such renewable energy to get off fossil fuels as soon as possible, not for more data centres.
People Before Profit again called for a national policy to stop the proliferation of centres and said they will continue to push for bans locally in councils and nationally in the Dáil.