Bríd Smith TD: “Data centres driving demand and state bodies have their head in the sand”
People Before Profit TD and climate spokesperson Bríd Smith has labelled the comments from EirGrid’s CEO Mark Foley on the energy crisis as “highly misleading and selective.”
The TD said that power demand in Ireland was not normal or expected and was almost wholly driven by surging demand from data centres because of a deeply flawed state policy in accommodating a hugely disproportionate number of data centres here.
The TD said: “The EirGird CEOs statement was misleading, the power demand surge in recent years here is not normal and is a complete outlier from the rest of the EU; it is driven almost wholly by data centre demand and we now face another eight hyper scale centres being connected in the coming period.
The TD pointed out that recent information from CRU confirmed that Ireland’s power demand was highly unusual when compared to the rest of the EU. CRU figures showed that demand growth across the EU since 2016 has been declining or flat.
“The EirGrid statement suggest that data centres are the solution to this crisis as opposed to the reality- that they are driving the crisis.”
The TD also questioned the idea that the centres could reduce their demand and could save us from power cuts saying: “It’s an extraordinary inversion of the reality and I will be asking the climate committee to recall Mr Foley to a future hearing. We need to hear what data centres have this excess capacity, and how much more power the state is expected to offer to these new centres who will be connecting to the grid in the coming months.”
The TD again repeated calls for a moratorium on new data centre connections saying the state was attempting to feed the sector’s insatiable demands, and this was driving both increased energy demands, threats to power for ordinary people and the push for more fossil fuel infrastructure in the middle of a climate crisis.”