Data center boom: Is Ireland’s power grid about to go down?

When it comes to data centers, Ireland is becoming increasingly popular. But while the server farms are growing, the expansion of the power grid is stagnating. The far too high power consumption could not only cause the Irish power grid to collapse. It also has ecological consequences. Ireland may not be able to meet its climate targets due to the large number of data centers. How long can the EU member keep it up?

A global problem?

A daily routine of a conventional EU citizen makes it clear why we have a serious problem with data centers. First thing in the morning coffee is streaming the morning playlist on Spotify. Work in the home office or conventional office is followed by video conferencing. When you get off work, you make yourself comfortable on the couch to “binge-watch” your new favorite series. Sound familiar? Of course, all of this requires corresponding resources, which are provided by data centers. A true El Dorado in this regard was and is EU member Ireland. After all, U.S. corporations like Facebook, Apple & Co. not only had the best tax conditions there, but on top of that also plenty of space and the best climate for setting up data centers. But slowly the spearhead seems to have been reached. There would still be enough space. However, in addition to the collapse of the Irish power grid, there is also the threat of missing climate targets.

Sustainability looks different

When one thinks of environmental pollution, one primarily has smoking chimneys of coal-fired power plants in mind. But streaming is also a real climate killer. The example of Ireland makes this abundantly clear. Since there are now almost 70 data centers in the country, electricity consumption is correspondingly high. The consumption of one system is equivalent to almost 80,000 Irish households. Expressed in figures, the server farms on the Emerald Isle consume an impressive 900 megawatts. This corresponds to around 11 percent of Ireland’s total electricity requirements. If experts are to be believed, this trend is likely to continue in the coming years. One major Irish electricity provider, for example, estimates that data centers could account for as much as 30 percent of Ireland’s total electricity demand by 2029.

This is a really tricky situation. After all, in our digitized society, you can’t do without the Internet from one day to the next. The experts are well aware of this. The problem, however, is not the sheer mass of data centers, but their concentration in Ireland. Better distribution within Europe must be ensured, otherwise there is a risk of collapse in Ireland. The consequence of this would be that traditional consumers would no longer have electricity. If you take Germany, which is the EU member with the most server farms in terms of numbers, as a comparison, it becomes clear how overwhelming the situation is for Ireland. In this country, data centers are estimated to account for just 5 percent of electricity consumption in 2030.

A solution must be found

Facebook and Co. leave a positive public impression when it comes to powering their data centers. For example, they regularly emphasize that the electricity always comes from renewable sources. However, environmentalists in Ireland are calling on the tech companies to provide storage facilities for green electricity. After all, a shortage of electricity from renewable sources threatens a shutdown for the entire country. Alternatively, the resource-hungry server farms would then be supplied with environmentally harmful electricity from coal-fired power plants after all.

This would always be preferred to simply shutting down the servers, since the functioning of Internet corporations is simply essential these days. Accordingly, calls for a temporary halt to construction are growing louder from both the Irish opposition and environmental groups. The first thing to do is to observe the medium-term effects of the existing data centers before simply carrying on as before. There is no other way to achieve the climate targets, he said.

German data centers to become climate neutral

In this country, of course, the power requirements of data centers are also increasing significantly. Although the share of total consumption is significantly lower than in Ireland, experts also expect server farms in Germany to consume significantly more electricity in the future. To ensure that this is not too damaging to the environment, the “traffic light” coalition has stipulated in its coalition agreement that such data centers must be climate-neutral from 2027 onwards.