Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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71. To ask the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment if there is a limit in megawatts in relation to how large a private electricity power generation installation can be (details supplied). [5198/23]

Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party)
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The recently published Climate Action Plan 2023 sets out a plan to implement the carbon budgets and sectoral emissions ceilings along with a roadmap for taking decisive action to halve our emissions by 2030 and reach net zero no later than 2050, as was committed to in the Programme for Government. The plan sets out measures and actions to ensure electricity demand is managed in line with our climate objectives. Flexible and decarbonised demand from large energy users, such as data centres, is critical to protecting security of supply and ensuring consistency with the binding carbon budgets. This work will include a review into the current gas and electricity connection policies for new Large Energy Users.

The Commission for Regulation of Utilities (CRU) published on 23 November 2021 the “CRU Direction to the System Operators related to Data Centre grid connection processing” (CRU/21/124). This decision requires data centre connections to have on-site generation (and/or battery storage) that is sufficient to meet their own demand and, to assist in full decarbonisation of the power system; this generation should also be capable of running on renewably sourced fuels (such as renewable gas or hydrogen) when supplies become more readily available.

In July of 2022, 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 greenhouse gas emissions, and climate priorities. The goal of this policy is to ensure the positive benefits for sustainability are maximised and that digital technologies are used in a sustainable manner to ensure the energy and circular economy challenges from digitalisation are aligned with our climate objectives. My Department is working regularly across relevant agencies and government departments to support the effective implementation of this policy.

EirGrid has statutory and contractual obligations to protect confidentiality that would prohibit them from disclosing customer information to a third party so they cannot comment on the specifics of any connection to the transmission system. With regards to private power generation installation more generally, Grid Code requires that any unit greater than 10 MW or aggregated units greater than 10 MW are subject to Central Dispatch. Therefore, units greater than 10MW cannot be fully private or off grid currently.

There are also potentially a number of planning and environmental permitting limitations that could influence the maximum size of a generator on any particular site.