Ireland's datacentres overtake electricity use of all urban homes combined
Ireland's datacentres consumed 21% of electricity in 2022, exceeding urban homes' use. Concerns arise over climate impact as demand may reach 31% in three years, urging tech firms to invest in renewables.
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Ireland's datacentres consumed 21% of the country's electricity last year, surpassing the combined electricity use of all urban homes at 18%. This increase of a fifth from 2022 has raised concerns about the impact on climate targets. The surge in power demand, largely driven by data processing needs for artificial intelligence, could potentially lead to datacentres consuming 31% of Ireland's electricity within three years. This would exceed the electricity demand of both urban and rural homes combined, putting pressure on tech companies to invest in renewable energy sources. Ireland's heavy reliance on fossil fuels, with over 50% of electricity generated from gas plants, coal, peat, or oil, highlights the need for a rapid transition to renewable energy sources like wind and solar power. Experts emphasize the necessity for Ireland to accelerate its renewable energy development to align with its growing datacentre industry and tech sector, which have been attracted to the country due to its low corporate taxation policies.
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13 commentsMoving the datacenters away from East coast Dublin to West coast. Galway in an ideal world would be also useful.
There has been an increased push to run the data centres on green technologies like solar, wind, and nuclear, e.g. [1]. Due to the machines being co-located makes it easier to do this compared to every website being hosted on machines spread over the country, where it is more likely that they will be run by fossil fuels.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/rush-data-centers-cr...
https://www.siemens-energy.com/global/en/home/stories/irelan...
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/rivers-lakes-and-data-...
- AI might have the solution to electricity over-consumption today
- If not today then in the near future
- If not in the near future then before the necessary timescale for climate change reversal
- You have no reason to doubt such long time horizons; just look at the last few years and insert imagination for upcoming years
EDIT: But this would be much worse if Ireland was running on something like coal.
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Taking a closer look at AI's supposed energy apocalypse
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Taking a closer look at AI's supposed energy apocalypse
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