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

The new consultation from EirGrid takes a very good approach because it looks at the wider picture of how we develop our society. It is not just about emissions reductions or bringing forward renewables, but the long-term big picture thinking about what type of energy system we have to serve our society. That poses various questions to the public. Should we perhaps continue what has been done in the last ten or 20 years, which was more developer-led whereby the developers of renewable power said where they wanted to go, or should we go for demand-led? Should we move and adjust some of the demand to match the power system we need? We will probably take a combination of various approaches, but one of the things we will ensure is that demand, be it from data centres or other large energy users, is planned in a way that lowers the cost, minimises emissions and ensures we have a fully sustainable system. That may involve locating data centres close to where the power is, or restricting in certain areas where the grid cannot cope with the addition. However, it will not say "No" to data centres because we need them as part of the wider economy.

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