Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 2:

In page 4, after line 37, to insert the following: “(c) place a moratorium on connections to the national grid by high energy users such as data centres,”.

I will start by expressing utter disgust at what we heard here yesterday from the Chairperson of the Joint Committee on Environment and Climate Action, Deputy Brian Leddin. He accused us, who expressed concerns about the proliferation of data centres and the impact these have on the national grid, of using sensationalist tropes, that we were being populist and did not know what we were talking about. He was disgraceful. If that is the position of the Green Party, then shame on it, because all the evidence points to us being correct about this. If he accuses us of using sensationalist tropes, will he say the same about CRU and EirGrid? A statement made by CRU says:

EirGrid has estimated that the data centre demand will be a key driver for electricity demand in Ireland for the foreseeable future.

[...]

Information provided by EirGrid shows that data centres are the largest demand driver out of all the demand by connected customer groups. The rate at which data centres seek to grow their load is unprecedented in Ireland. Over the last 4 years EirGrid have seen annual increases in demand usage of about 600 GWh from data centres alone - equivalent to the addition of 140,000 households to the power system each year. This contrasts starkly to demand growth in other sectors outside of the data centre industry.

I could go on. These are publicly available statements from EirGrid and CRU. I notice from information in The Irish Times and other publications that, since May, there is a de facto moratorium on data centres.

We have a problem, however, because there are existing agreements with data centres to connect them to the national grid:

EirGrid has outlined that Connection Agreements are already in place for over 1,800 MW ... for data centres ... Ireland has a current demand peak of around 5,500 MW.

We are seeing the unprecedented growth in the demand from data centres. To demand a moratorium on this be built in to the legislation is nothing but pure sense. What was said to us here last night was absolute nonsense by the Minister of State. I hope the Minister does not repeat it today. In fact he lied - I should say he misled the public - because he said no permissions have been given in the past two years. That is not the point. The point is there are connection agreements committing us to the level of power usage I have quoted that have to go on the national grid because the agreements have been made.

Is the Minister trying to tell us that data centres are not going to soak up the majority of this extra power being bought in? If that is not the case, will the Minister show us what is going to soak it up? No excuse about the war in Ukraine or the energy crisis or anything else will wash away what is actually happening here. I want to push this amendment very strongly so that we place a moratorium on connections to the national grid by high energy users such as data centres and start looking after people and their needs. If there is a threat to the power in the winter of 2023-24 it is not because of householders, schools or hospitals, or even other aspects of industry. It is purely down to this crazy, insane proliferation of these high guzzling energy consumers. The Minister has done nothing about it and it really needs to be addressed in this Bill.

See this speech in context