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

The Government's decision on sectoral emissions ceilings means we must reduce electricity emissions to approximately 3 million tonnes per annum by 2030 for the electricity sector, which is the steepest decline of all sectors in the economy. The targets are particularly challenging because of increasing electricity demand, including demand from data centres, and the electrification of heat and transport. Our principal tools to ensure our emissions are on track is to use renewable electricity to power our grid and to ensure demand growth is sustainable, flexible and consistent with the legally binding ceiling. We are already producing more than 40% of our electricity from renewable sources and we need to increase this to 80% by 2030 to meet our sectoral emission ceilings.

The Commission for Regulation of Utilities, CRU, has determined in its November 2021 direction that new data centre connections offers must be based on them having adequate on-site dispatchable generation or storage or both as back-up.

In July of this year, the Government published a new statement on the role of data centres in Ireland's enterprise strategy. The statement addresses sustainable data centre development to align with Ireland's renewable energy targets, security of supply, sectoral emissions and climate priorities. The policy is clear that islanded data centre developments, that is, developments not connected to the electricity grid and powered mainly by on-site fossil fuel generation, would not be in line with national policy. The forthcoming climate action plan will set out a comprehensive pathway for the decarbonisation of our electricity sector in line with the sectoral emission ceilings.

While I am not referring to the Deputy himself, a large number of Deputies in this House seem to believe that all our woes and all our ills in respect of meeting our climate targets are down to the development of data centres. Ensuring that demand and supply match and that everything forms part of a decarbonised future is a real issue but we can do it. We will need and want data centres in our country because they are a central part of our economic strategy and security. However, they must be part of a plan for decarbonisation and, in my mind, they want to be. The companies behind these data centres are going to have to work with the Government, as I believe they will, to ensure we keep the economic strength that comes with data centres while not missing climate targets or seeing an impact on our energy security.

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