Bríd Smith TD says crisis means government must halt any new connections
Reacting to further threats of power cuts this year as the national electricity grid comes under severe pressure, People Before Profit climate spokesperson, Bríd Smith TD, has called for the government to implement an immediate halt on any proposed new data centre connections to the grid.
The TD said today: “The most urgent task this state has now is ensuring the power needs of ordinary people are met this winter. There is a concentrated effort to muddy the water about causes and who is to blame but the elephant in the room is the blind insistence of government Ministers to continue facilitating more and more data centre connections- it must stop.”
The TD said that eight new data centres are planned to be connected to the national grid in the coming years, adding another 1.5 GW of demand, more than three times the proposed emergency generation plant that the government has ordered.
She added: “It is utter lunacy to pretend we can continue with the current data centre policy and the big fear is this crisis is been used to drive the expansion of more fossil fuel infrastructure like the proposed LNGs- a policy which will simply lock us into continued dependence on fossil gas at a time of worsening climate chaos.
“Instead of using this crisis to push LNGs, we need to take the first rational step and stop immediately any more connections to the grid from these high energy users. The answer to a crisis of energy supply and a parallel crisis of climate is the same. We must reduce our usage, not seek to expand the demand with huge energy users like these centres.”