Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for stepping in today. I welcome the Minister of State. To build on or to explore Deputy Bríd Smith’s concerns further, I would certainly like to see what the projected growth in demand for electricity would be in the context of the data centres that are planned and then what it would be without them. There is a narrative that we are building this extra capacity to facilitate these data centres. Unless we see those two projections, one for the forecast demand without data centres and then one with them included, it will not be possible for us to know how things stand. This is complex. My understanding is that we are building this extra capacity, and it is fossil fuel generation, to keep the lights on when renewable energy sources are not available. This is fossil fuel energy generation that will be used in situations when demand is high, especially in the winter, and wind and solar renewable sources of energy are not available.

It is capacity that will not be used very much. It is for that rare situation. One is probably talking up to a small number of hours in the year. Somewhat paradoxically, building this fossil fuel generation, because it can be dispatched, enables us to build more renewables. While it might be a bit counter-intuitive, this can actually lead to us having lower emissions than if we did not build it. I appreciate that the Minister of State is standing in for the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, but perhaps the officials could respond with those projections around growth in electricity demand with and without the data centres. That would clear up much of the confusion. The reality is that we are electrifying our economy and, data centres aside, there will be very significant growth because of transport and home heating becoming electrified, as well as very significant population growth. These are the reasons that electricity demand is growing. We need to really get into the weeds on this and show that this new capacity is not required to keep data centres going, because that is a very damaging argument and I do not believe it is true. I do not know whether the Minister of State wishes to comment, but I would certainly welcome projections with and without data centres.