Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour)
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142. To ask the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment his views on introducing a moratorium on new data centre connections in the context of energy security and carbon emissions targets. [62759/22]

Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party)
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The Government’s decision on Sectoral Emissions Ceilings means we must reduce electricity emissions to approximately 3 MtCO2eq per annum by 2030 for the electricity sector, the steepest decline of all sectors of the economy. The targets are particularly challenging because of increasing electricity demand, including demand from data centres, and also 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 over 40% of our electricity from renewable sources and we need to increase this to 80% by 2030 to meet our sectoral emission ceilings.

The CRU have determined in their November 2021 Direction that new data centre connections offers must be based on them having adequate onsite dispatchable generation and or storage as back-up.

In July of this year 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 are not connected to the electricity grid and are 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.