Data centers could use as much as a third of Ireland's energy supply by 2026

[Alfonso Maruccia]

In context: Ireland has slowly become one of Europe's leading technology hubs. The island hosts dozens of giant data centers, and they require a substantial amount of energy to keep those bit streams flowing.

A recent report by Ireland's Central Statistics Office (CSO) highlights the explosive growth of energy consumption in data centers. The electricity required by data center operators increased by 20 percent between 2022 and 2023, and the total metered energy consumption equaled 21 percent of Ireland's capacity in 2023.

Data centers now exceed the energy needs of both urban and rural households, which accounted for 18 percent and 10 percent of total metered electricity consumption, respectively. In 2023, the CSO recorded a truly unprecedented increase in power required by Ireland's data centers, rising from 290 gigawatt hours in 2015 to 1,661 gigawatt hours, a staggering 473 percent increase.

Ireland currently hosts 82 data centers, with 14 more under construction and another 40 planned for the next few years. Thanks to its low corporate tax rates and several transatlantic cables connecting Europe to the US, the country has attracted a significant portion of EU investments from the world's largest technology companies.

A recent report from the International Energy Agency (IEA) warned about the growing global energy demand by data centers, which could double in just a couple of years. By 2026, Ireland may be forced to reserve almost a third of its entire energy supply (32 percent) for data center operators alone.

Ireland recently set an ambitious goal to combat human-made climate change, aiming for a 50 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. Data centers still rely heavily on electricity generated by burning fossil fuels, and generative AI is further driving up energy consumption in Ireland and globally.

Energy consumption by so-called "AI data centers" could double by 2030, recent reports estimate, putting unprecedented stress on energy grids and potentially leading to widespread blackouts and reliability issues. However, some in the IT industry remain optimistic. Bill Gates has suggested that AI could reduce energy consumption, and Google is hopeful about AI's ability to mitigate its own environmental impact.

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Data centers could use as much as a third of Ireland's energy supply by 2026

 

[brucek]

It's hard to believe that much energy is needed to serve Ireland's users. It must be that these data centers are serving not just Ireland, but perhaps large chunks of the EU and maybe beyond?

If that's the case, using Ireland's total power as the denominator is misleading. The relevant denominator would the energy use of the total population served. I'm going to guess that at the point the data center portion is something like 2-3% of a typical user's total electricity usage? And if you compute it as total energy usage, not just electricity, it would be that much lower after fuel for cars, home heating, etc.

I'd further assume that Ireland is requiring prospective data center builders to also have made arrangements for their power generation requirements, so it's not like home users are going to go without.

 

[Endymio]

"Energy consumption by so-called "AI data centers" could double by 2030, recent reports estimate, putting unprecedented stress on energy grids and potentially leading to widespread blackouts."

By any estimate, the electricity consumption of a worldwide fleet of EVs dwarfs by orders of magnitude any usage from AI datacenters. Funny the media isn't running stories about how that may lead to blackouts.

using Ireland's total power as the denominator is misleading. The relevant denominator would the energy use of the total population served.

If it weren't for misleading stories on energy and the environment, there'd be none such at all. Gates may be wrong about many things, but he's certainly right that AI has the capability to save far more energy than it consumes. In shipping alone, AI-based routing solutions to the so-called "travelling salesman problem" have the potential to cut truck and van mileage by 15% or more, equivalent to taking tens of thousands of these vehicles off the roads entirely.

 

[Watzupken]

"Energy consumption by so-called "AI data centers" could double by 2030, recent reports estimate, putting unprecedented stress on energy grids and potentially leading to widespread blackouts."

By any estimate, the electricity consumption of a worldwide fleet of EVs dwarfs by orders of magnitude any usage from AI datacenters. Funny the media isn't running stories about how that may lead to blackouts.


If it weren't for misleading stories on energy and the environment, there'd be none such at all. Gates may be wrong about many things, but he's certainly right that AI has the capability to save far more energy than it consumes. In shipping alone, AI-based routing solutions to the so-called "travelling salesman problem" have the potential to cut truck and van mileage by 15% or more, equivalent to taking tens of thousands of these vehicles off the roads entirely.

I think one thing you are forgetting, and that is AI itself is a power hog. It may help optimize something to make it more fuel efficient, but if you consider the power draw of AI servers globally, that's a significant increase in normal power usage as compared to say 3 to 4 years ago. So much so that these major AI companies are thinking about using nuclear power plants to power new AI data centers. So is it true that AI will save more energy that it consumes? I think it will be interesting to see how many EV batteries will be required to power an AI server rack each day.

 

[Gregtombstone]

I live in Ireland. Despite the wholesale price for electricity being around 8 cent per KW we pay 35 as consumers. Our ***** green minister for energy and industry refused to build any gas power plants for the last decade. He is also responsible for granting permission for all the data centres. We are being socially engineered to use less electricity thru very high prices as our countries power demand equal what we can generate.

Our Green minister put all his eggs in the wind energy basket which admittedly we have lots of, but the incompetent minister has not the ability to oversee the expansion of the national grid or sort out the planning issues related to new wind farms. He also does not seem to realise that the wind does not always blow and that we are now dependent on electricity top ups from the UK as we do not have enough conventional power plants.

For the gas turbines that remain we are dependant on a gas field off the west coast which is near its end of life and a pipeline from Scotland which pumps Norwegian gas to us. This pipeline is not big enough for our needs once our remaining operational gas field runs dry in under a decade. We actually have one of the largest untapped gas fields in Europe 10 k off our South Coast but again the energy minister got a law passed forbidding its development.