Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

The Government statement on the role of data centres in Ireland's enterprise strategy acknowledges the role of data centres as part of the digital and communications infrastructure for many sectors of our economy. The statement also noted that data centres pose considerable challenges to the future planning and operation of Ireland’s power system. Such challenges arise in terms of renewable energy policy, generation adequacy, security of electricity supply and electricity customer costs.

The programme for Government commits to developing efficiency standards for equipment and processes, particularly those set to grow rapidly, such as data centres. The ICT sector needs to undergo its own green transformation. Earlier this year, the European Commission adopted Shaping Europe's Digital Future, which includes an objective to foster an open, democratic and sustainable society. Key actions include initiatives to achieve climate-neutral, highly energy efficient and sustainable data centres by no later than 2030. I note that the EU ecodesign regulation on servers and data storage products sets minimum standards around the environmental impact of these products and requires that circular economy principles will be mandatory for suppliers of this type of equipment from next year.

The climate action plan also provides that the IDA will use its new strategy for 2020 to 2024 to fully integrate decarbonisation objectives across its portfolio of clients. This strategy will seek to ensure new large-scale enterprise investments in Ireland, including factors such as location and power purchase agreement opportunities, are aligned with the build-out of the grid to maximise renewable sources. We have seen recently a number of unsubsidised corporate power purchase agreements, purchased by data centre operators, in the Irish market and I hope we can encourage more. When data centre operators purchase electricity directly from renewable generators, it contributes towards the State objective to decarbonise our electricity system without any subsidy from electricity customers.

In addition, the Government’s climate action fund is supporting South Dublin County Council to develop an innovative district heating project in the Tallaght area, using waste heat from a local data centre. The Tallaght district heating scheme will provide low carbon heat to public sector, residential and commercial customers, with the objective of decreasing the level of emissions associated with the use of fossil fuels for heating. This project will provide valuable information in regard to the synergies between district heating and waste heat recovery from a data centre. This will inform future policy for the use of waste heat in appropriate locations and where technically feasible.

My Department is working with the Department of Business, Enterprise and Innovation and the relevant energy bodies to implement the commitments in the climate action plan and the programme for Government.

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