Dáil debates

Wednesday, 29 June 2022

EirGrid, Electricity and Turf (Amendment) Bill 2022: Committee and Remaining Stages

 

3:47 pm

Photo of Denis NaughtenDenis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I will speak to my amendment No. 22. I have heard the comments from colleagues about data centres. As the Minister will know from the records in his own Department, this is something I had been highlighting during my term there back in 2017 and 2018. On foot of that, the then Government published a statement on the role of data centres in Ireland. It had a substantial section in it on the issue and challenges regarding energy infrastructure. The difficulty today is 1 MW out of every 7 MW generated on this island is being consumed by data centres and I think that is set to double if not treble between now and 2030. The fact is the vast majority of the growth in electricity consumption we are going to see over this decade is going to be as a result of data centres. The policy statement adopted by the Government in June 2018 clearly set out a prioritisation that data centres should only go on the grid where the electricity supply is available for them.

It states the connection of data centres that have an employment dividend associated with them should be prioritised, rather than facilitating speculative data centres that, sadly, have been connected to the grid. The difficulty with all of this is the cost of this 650 MW, which is roughly the amount of electricity that is going into the data centres, in the PSO levy will be €40 for every household in the country. That is what they will have to pay to subsidise the generation of electricity going into these data centres. On top of that, they will have to pay the transmission and distribution costs of bringing that electricity into the data centres.

Amendment No. 22 in my name proposes that the Government pass on the cost of supplying electricity to data centres to the operators of those data centres rather than asking families who are currently struggling to pay their electricity bills to pay another €40 to cover the cost of this electricity going into the data centres. In the middle of an energy emergency where families are faced with astronomical costs, it is immoral that they are being asked to put their hands in their pocket to subsidise the electricity going into data centres. I am asking that within 180 days of the passage of the Bill, the Minister bring forward proposals to ensure data centres pay for the cost of their own electricity rather than families being expected to do so.

I was interested in the point made earlier by the Minister in respect of meeting our 80% renewable electricity target by 2030. As he knows, however, EirGrid has set itself a target of managing renewable electricity on the grid of 70% by 2030. It has not budged from that. It only has a plan up to 70%. It is publicly stating that it is working towards a plan of delivering 70% renewable electricity onto the grid by 2030, rather than the 80% which is the Government target. If we are not planning today, in 2022, to manage 80% electricity on the grid by 2030, we will have to come back with further emergency legislation to deal with further crises resulting from the lack of planning. We can see it in the context of the Bill before us. Part of it results from numerous data centres being allowed to connect to the grid. Another part relates to old plants being closed down without backup plants being in place. Part of it is an underestimation of where we were going to be and another part of it is because of the abandonment of contracts by semi-State companies. In spite of all those mistakes and all the people who are being paid significant, through the service fees that are paid through electricity bills, to plan our electricity grid, the Government is now asking every home in the country to pay another €40 each year for the next three years to compensate for the failures that were made in projecting out in respect of electricity demand. Sadly, it is the people who are struggling to pay their electricity bills who will have to do this.

My simple request of the Minister is to let the data centres pay for their own electricity. Any of them that are creating jobs are very wealthy multinational companies that are quite willing to pay the cost of their electricity. We need to put that mechanism in place. Any of them that are here on a speculative basis should cough up as well because they are just out to make a buck for themselves and that should not be done on the back of hard-pressed families across the country. In June 2018, the Cabinet stated in black and white that it would have to consider mechanisms to ensure the PSO levies for consumers were not being burdened with the cost of the additional charges resulting from data centres being connected to the grid. Since June 2018, successive Ministers have failed abysmally to address that issue. That is why families are now being asked to pay an extra €40 to cover the cost of this electricity.

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