Data centres could use more electricity than Ireland’s entire industrial sector by 2030, posing a significant threat to Ireland’s climate commitments, new research has found.

Analysis from University College Cork said electricity demand from data centres had grown at an annual rate of 22.6% since 2015. Without them, Ireland’s electricity demand would have seen “minimal growth” over the last decade.

Instead, Ireland’s electricity demand has grown at the second fastest rate in the EU, while between 2017 and 2023, all additional wind energy generation has been absorbed by data centres, which means renewables are not delivering net reductions in fossil fuels use.

“The current trajectory of data centre demand is incompatible with Ireland’s climate commitments,” UCC’s Professor Hannah Daly said. “Data centres are growing far faster than the renewable energy procured to meet their needs.

Moreover, data centres are connecting to the natural gas network to get around constraints in the power network. This is prolonging Ireland’s dependency on fossil fuels and will make legally binding carbon budgets unachievable.

While data centres accounted for a fifth of electricity consumption in Ireland last year, this proportion is expected to rise significantly in the next five years. By 2030, it could exceed the entire industrial sector in this country under “high-demand scenarios” outlined in the research.

The study, commissioned by Friends of the Earth, also said the potential scale of demand from data centres that have made formal enquiries to connect to the gas network is “enormous, potentially exceeding Ireland’s total present energy demand but is highly uncertain”.

Furthermore, it said data centres were driving additional greenhouse gas emissions from both electricity and natural gas consumption, which threatens carbon budgets.

The research said without “decisive action”, data centres would continue to “divert renewable energy to serving demand growth rather than displacing fossil fuels, deepen reliance on fossil fuels, and exacerbate Ireland’s carbon budget overshoot and energy security threats”.

It made a number of policy recommendations, including enforcing stricter power and gas grid connection policies for data centres that must align with carbon budgets.

Separately, real-time greenhouse gas emissions reporting for data centres should be made mandatory to allow a full assessment of their impact.

A new national electricification strategy should also be pursued to accelerate the electrification of transport, industry and heating to ensure renewables primarily displace fossil fuels.

Friends of the Earth said the research revealed a “stark picture” and showed a “blindspot in our climate action planning”.

Rosi Leonard, a data centre campaigner with Friends of the Earth, said: “The State’s policy of allowing unlimited data centre growth is like trying to fight climate breakdown and take fossil fuels out of homes with both hands tied behind our back.

“We need a moratorium on data centres in Ireland now before this problem gets any worse.”

As part of their general election manifestos, both Labour and the Social Democrats pledged to ban new data centre developments in the interim pending further analysis of their impact.

No such pledges were put forward by Fine Gael or Fianna Fáil.

Data centres to use more electricity than Ireland’s entire industrial sector by 2030