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Irish datacenters now guzzle 23% of the country's electricity
- j45 3mo agoCanada seems better positioned for datacenters since they can power them locally with a multitude of options and not impact the local grid.
- apercu 3mo agoI lived in Ontario for 18 years and found power to be quite expensive compared to the midwestern US state I lived in before and after. I believe this is due to the concentrated population centers needing to subsidize the transmission to the least populated areas, and would guess this would have an impact on energy costs for data centers in Canada. But again, my experience is (mostly) limited to SW Ontario, where everything is fairly expensive.
- j45 3mo agoThe post above seems to point to Alberta as the best value prop.
- retrac 3mo agoQuebec has a larger grid and lower rates due to its abundant hydroelectricity. Ontario's relatively high costs are from the supply mix which is about 50% nuclear, 30% hydro, 10% wind, 10% gas. Residential kWh as delivered is currently (no pun intended) about 12 US cents which is a bit high if you're used to Midwestern or Alberta coal but those in California are probably envious.
- bawolff 3mo ago> Alberta coal Alberta doesn't have any coal power plants afaik.
- gnabgib 3mo agoNot since 2024[0].. there's still coal mines though. [0]: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/alberta-genesee-2-offline-is-this-end-of-coal-power-1.7237703 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/alberta-genesee-2-off...
- dmix 3mo agoEnergy prices are cheaper in Canada as a whole than the US which is cheaper than Europe. While China it's still significantly cheaper that those since they invested in every sort of energy instead of fighting it.
- lemmox 3mo agoFB just put shovels in the ground on a datacenter in Alberta. Bringing a new nat gas plant online nearby but it's a little quicker to bring the DC on than the plant.
- j45 3mo agoIt seems like local power generation is OK too in Alberta, meaning Natural Gas or Solar on-site without needing to connect it to the grid.
- thegrim33 3mo agoThey chose to add the word "guzzle". They could have just written "Irish datacenters now use 23% of the country's electricity". But they made the editorial decision to add in "guzzle". What's the word for this type of propaganda, where they add in some sort of adjective that wasn't needed, in order to prime the reader on how to think/feel, rather than just objectively reporting the facts? What are the odds that the content of the article is objective and factual, given the decisions they made with the headline?
- bgun 3mo ago[flagged]
- JuniperMesos 3mo agoThis post is propaganda for exactly the same cause that The Register article is propaganda for.
- EA-3167 3mo agoWhat's the cause?
- fc417fc802 3mo agoSomeone expressing frustration at emotionally charged headlines that clearly intend to rile people up is propaganda? Absurd.
- arcticfox 3mo agoLol the word guzzle in this context is just objectively spin. It's fine, especially because it's so transparent, but it only takes reading 4 words to know the position of the article on the situation.
- coldtea 3mo agoI find that the word guzzle is dead accurate. They consume a huge amount of the country's electricity not only for no clear benefit to society, but mostly for making it worse, with more social media posts, stupid videos, surveillance, advertising-led consumption, ai slop As compared to productive uses, like lighting, food preservation, home warming, medical use, transport, and useful manufacturing.
- illwrks 3mo agoA few years ago I was reading a recruitment report and was surprised to learn that Ireland is a large source of data scientists, so it’s no surprise really
- alephnerd 3mo agoYep. IDA's services FDI model helped attract much of the tech scene that exists in Ireland today. In the 1990s and 2000s no one would have expected Ireland to become the tech hub it is today without the IDA's foresightedness.
- teamonkey 3mo agoI don’t really see the link between data scientists and datacentres, or even AI researchers and datacentres. The data scientists aren’t the ones working in the data centres. There’s no real advantage to having the data they’re working on next door unless it’s extremely lag sensitive. Local proximity of a datacentre is good for fintech, Netflix and gaming servers.
- alephnerd 3mo agoIreland has been a data center hub for decades - especially thanks to the IDA successfully wooing Microsoft back in 2007 [0], and it helped played a role in helping Ireland partially recover from the AIB and housing collapse back in 2008 and become the tech hub it is today. Heck, it was the corneestone of the IDA's tech FDI policy back then [1]. Heck, Google itself only expanded in Ireland back in the 2000s in large part because they worked on acquiring Colt to build their European CoLo in Ireland, and data centers now represent around 18% of Ireland's total GVA [2]. [0] - https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/hyperscalers/microsoft-plans-500m-dublin-data-center-update-from-may-2007 https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/hyperscalers/microsoft-p... [1] - https://www.siliconrepublic.com/science/ireland-has-the-potential-to-become-the-worlds-green-data-centre-capital https://www.siliconrepublic.com/science/ireland-has-the-pote... [2] - https://www.iiea.com/blog/data-centres-in-ireland-the-state-of-play https://www.iiea.com/blog/data-centres-in-ireland-the-state-...
- breppp 3mo agoThat and misappropriating a lot of the taxes of other countries in the process
- alephnerd 3mo agoIt's not misappropriation. Other countries within the EU could be much more business incorporation and FDI friendly, and IDA Ireland tends to be one of the more competent trade promotion agencies within the EU. Why should Ireland undermine 13% of it's GDP [0]? Edit: can't reply > Telling American multinationals you will have them pay 0 tax isn't exactly a "tax policy" as such Ireland's corporate tax rate is 12.5% but drops to 6.25% if it's qualified R&D and IP income with an added 35% R&D tax credit. It's attractive, but CEE states like Poland and Czechia can (and often do) match that. The biggest attraction for Ireland is the fact that everyone speaks English in Ireland, and Irish tax and corporate legal firms have worked with American firms since the 1990s, which reduces the headache. > Or to 0.005% if you're Apple Which ended in 2014, yet Ireland still remains attractive for tech FDI. At the end of the day, Ireland executed much better than it's developmental peers in the 1990s (Spain, Czechia, Russia, Ukraine, Cyprus, Greece, Argentine, and Libya in 1991 based on HDI) simply because it was much more business friendly. [0] - https://www.trade.gov/country-commercial-guides/ireland-digital-economy https://www.trade.gov/country-commercial-guides/ireland-digi...
- matttttttttttt 3mo agoI read this as 'Irish Dancers now guzzle....' I'm sure they work up a sweat but probably not on the same order of magnitude
- pizzafeelsright 3mo agoThat is about 3% of California's total energy usage Or about 11,000 GWh which is about 4% of California which means without the theatrics: California has 4x more data centers than Ireland. California: ~810 watts per person. (278,000 GWh / 39.4 million people) Ireland: ~690 watts per person. (32,000 GWh / 5.3 million people) We have air conditioning and that may be why we use more POWAH
- JumpCrisscross 3mo agoWhat fraction of Irish GDP is linked to datacenters? If I remember correctly from the pre-AI world, datacenters were at the heart of Dublin's industrial strategy, and they were credibly linked to a double-digit fraction of production.
- stuaxo 3mo agoIrelands big pull to these companies is to not tax them as much as other countries.
- dboreham 3mo agoThat said, once built and lit up, it's hard to move a data center to another country.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- dilyevsky 3mo agoLike 90%+ cost of a dc is actual computers which are pretty shippable
- jamesfinlayson 3mo agoYep, seen a data-centre move happen at work (from a distance - I wasn't effected). For a business with cross-data centre redundancy and no allowable down-time for core business, it was at least a year-long project I think. All for a data-centre in the same city.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- hackerSkoolRoot 3mo agoAre we allowed post masto links? I'm an Irish techie. I shot a video about this. Sorry about the camera shake: https://mastodon.ie/@handi/116900076149521593 https://mastodon.ie/@handi/116900076149521593
- hahahaa 3mo agoExcellent video. Thanks for making it. Thanks for sharing it.
- infinite_spin 3mo ago> Dump #datacenters - they are not critical Internet infrastructure! what is the alternative? I don't think self hosting is a robust/defensible option for a majority of internet services
- naturalmovement 3mo agoMaybe we ought to take away society's Spotify etc. and go back to trading cassettes. I predict it will last all of two days. You see the mentally ill chaos unfold within hours when DNS or a CDN goes down. Imagine taking their datacenter-dependent toys away for more than a day. How will they navigate job interviews (in between datacenter protests) without relying on ChatGPT to feed them answers? Sounds like a circular dependency to me.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- spwa4 3mo agoNobody hosts datacenters in Ireland because of capacity reasons. It's not a good location for power, people or connectivity. They host them there for tax reasons. You can bet your firstborn these datacenters are only the exact size that is the minimum allowed by tax law, not a square millimeter more. Yes, datacenters are critical internet infrastructure. But in Ireland they're more like a sailing ship with the sails mounted underwater, because that's cheaper for tax reasons.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- hahahaa 3mo agoIs there a snowball effect where a big AWS region attracts more usage? Those snowballs are more significant in smaller countries?
- EwanToo 3mo agoYes, the largest regions get new services launched in them first, and the widest range of hardware, encouraging more people to use them.
- focusgroup0 3mo ago[dead]
- MariusGjerd 3mo ago[flagged]
- kotberg 3mo ago[flagged]
- thewanderer1983 3mo agoGuzzles or sensibly sips?
- HtmlProgrammer 3mo agoMy electricity costs 34 cent per Kw/h and I can’t afford solar panels or a renovation to air to water heating while the government insists we shouldn’t use oil / coal anymore nor logs or turf to heat our homes edit: I live in Ireland
- hunterpayne 3mo agoThat's 7x the cost that I pay in the Pacific NW. Where are you?
- Keloran 3mo agoI am going to assume based on the fact that the article is about Ireland, and Ireland uses the euro, the commenter is in Ireland
- keane 3mo agoAlso the mention of turf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%B3rd_na_M%C3%B3na https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%B3rd_na_M%C3%B3na
- hinkley 3mo agoThat makes it worse! A euro is worth about 10% more than a dollar. Ireland has a lot of oil in their power mix from what I'm seeing, so that makes a bit of sense. Maybe the high power cost is why they're deploying ~600GWh of new wind capacity per year for the last 15 years. Because at those rates the wholesale prices should be able to subsidize a lot of loans.
- hunterpayne 3mo agoWe don't measure capacity in GWh, we measure it in GW. And if Ireland had 600GW of wind, their entire island would be surrounded by a forest of windmills. Also, Ireland lacks any energy storage so none of that wind can be used for baseload, only variable load.
- mrb 3mo agoAh the old "country's worth of electricity" comparison... Keep in mind that Ireland's entire electricity needs could be covered by a one nuclear power plant (3.8 GW with 4 reactors). IOW, you could offload all Irish datacenters by connecting them to a single nuclear power reactor (~900 MW), a small building that has a footprint of under 50 x 50 meters for the reactor, and another of 100 x 50 meters for the generator.
- testing22321 3mo agoSweet. Start building TODAY and it will be done in nothing less than 20 years for nothing less than $20 BILLION. What should they do in the meantime?
- hunterpayne 3mo agoSure, $1B for the plant and $19B for the lawyers. Korea and China build them in 4 years for about $1B each. This is entirely self-inflicted by people who are completely scientifically illiterate.
- testing22321 3mo agoNo western country ever has. Average cost for the 28 China has under construction today is $7 BILLION
- rsynnott 3mo ago> Korea and China build them in 4 years for about $1B each. China seems to do 7 years _build time_ at ~$3bn/GW. So you're probably looking at at least a decade project start to end. Also, they're primarily using a reactor that isn't licensed in Europe and won't be anytime soon. The only Chinese plant using a European-licensed reactor type (EPR) took a decade to build (still faster than European builds of the same reactor, but not what you'd call quick).
- mrb 3mo agoOr Ireland can import electricity from France TODAY as we export on average 10 GW continuously, and most of it is already generated by nuclear :-)
- perching_aix 3mo agoThis article could have been a stacked bar chart with a caption. Maybe even should have been. Matter of fact, here you go people: https://imgur.com/a/s9KZRuQ https://imgur.com/a/s9KZRuQ (yearly version with 2015 as the anchor: https://imgur.com/a/f9ypK4W https://imgur.com/a/f9ypK4W) -- there's also another likely more illuminating chart below, focusing on the YoY differentials. Would have appreciated a bit more context too. This sounds very serious, but how does it compare in energy use per land area across countries? Or in absolute use? Maybe Ireland is just small? Maybe not very densely populated? Maybe efficient in its energy use otherwise? Maybe all of these? I also find the tone interesting. It's as if there was a threshold being approached [0], or if the rate was accelerating. But it's kinda the opposite? > Their share rose to 23 percent in 2025 after passing 20 percent in 2023 and 14 percent in 2021 So from 2021 to 2023 (+2 yrs) the jump was 6pp, and from 2023 to 2025 (also +2 yrs) was 3pp... meaning the expansion rate in usage share has slowed to a half? I could easily imagine a similar article celebrating. Once again though, visual: https://imgur.com/a/0eR3bl6 https://imgur.com/a/0eR3bl6 -- using the actual raw data instead. Basically what the article should have been. You can see the amount of change attributable to DCs being higher than 2025 from 2020 through 2023. 2024 was a significant drop, and 2025 is between the two. And what's with the random timeskips for the absolute data? Here's 2015, 2019, 2024, 2025, but not 2023 (only %), not 2022, not 2021 (only %), etc. So annoying. If we're throwing numbers around, then let's do it properly gents. The data is all available ^^ [1]. No need for untraceable quotes from a spokesperson; literally just a few clicks and a handful of agent prompts. [0] Not only is there of course no threshold to speak of, the entire narrative framing is up in the air. Why does it matter how much electricity DCs use (in absolute or relative terms), and who does it matter to? Ireland's electricity use energy mix was recorded to be a suspiciously tight majority "green" in 2024 at least: https://www.iea.org/countries/ireland/electricity https://www.iea.org/countries/ireland/electricity - could use all the energy they wanted if it was green energy, no? [1] https://data.cso.ie/ https://data.cso.ie/
- cbmuser 3mo agoIreland consumes roughly 40 TWh per year, that’s less than the production of four EPR reactors or two times Hinkley Point C. The country could easily solve its electricity problems with nuclear power. They can ask South Korea for help who built four reactors in UAE with 12 years which now provide 25% of the country’s electricity.
- anigbrowl 3mo agoNuclear power is a non-starter in IReland because the Sellafield nuclear plant in the UK emitted pollution of various for years but UK officials covered it up. The actual severity of the pollution is open to debate but the loss of trusthad a generational impact. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sellafield#Incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sellafield#Incidents
- pbgcp2026 3mo ago- To fix these two planks you take a hammer and a nail ... - NO! My uncle hit himself with a hammer real hard last year. It is "is a non-starter". Can we use glue? - Yes, it will be more expensive, less efficient ... - NO! My niece inhaled glue last year. It is "is a non-starter". Can we ... <Light goes out. Conversation continues in a darkness>
- teachrdan 3mo agoI know this is supposed to be a joke, but you are making a category error if you conflate hitting your thumb with a hammer with running a nuclear power plant. One of the problems with nuclear is that, for practical and security reasons, you are dependent on an authoritarian regime to run the plant -- a plant that will be inherently not-transparent for the same reasons. That means you have to trust the authorities in question to tell you the truth about risks like accidental discharges of radioactive waste. In the case of Ireland, which has a long history of being disenfranchised, the trust is understandably broken. This makes building a new nuclear plant and having it run in your country by the same powers that screwed you over before with the same technology a non-starter. It seems you didn't read the Sellafield article. If you want to be intellectually honest, I'd suggest starting there. (or at least with the "Incidents" section) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sellafield#Incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sellafield#Incidents
- mrtksn 3mo agoIsn't this a similar issue of doctors raised by taxpayers money doing hair transplant and cosmetic surgeries instead of working in much less profitable hospitals with sick people or European scientists and engineers risen by public education working in American tech companies or super rich people from all over the world buying all the homes in London which is valuable not because of its resources but because of the people there and now causing housing problems? They all have the same issues: 1) Pricing that doesn't account for externalities. 2) Those who bear the consequences are not those who reap the benefits
- hinkley 3mo agoWhat kind of plastic surgery are you looking to gatekeep? Because I guarantee you the people who pointed out that plastic surgery was covered have ideas of what that should be. Plastic surgery can include burn and emergency surgical scars (trauma surgeons are just trying to keep your insides in and your outsides out, and then they have to run to the next patient to do the same), and hair transplants can include head injuries or cancer surgeries in young people in addition to vain old men. When we discuss things like this in political arenas, nuance goes out the window and you're contributing to condemning little girls to walk around with giant patches of missing hair and people to tolerate visible scars that will absolutely be used to illegally discriminate against them for jobs that would allow them to afford their own procedures.
- hudo 3mo agoAnd got electricity price hike last year, and now few weeks ago again, from ~25c kwh, to around 35c kwh! They say its reliance on fossil fuels. Not just that, think Ireland has one of the most expensive broadbands in the EU!
- Schiendelman 3mo agoIf you're up to 35c/kWh, solar panels are almost definitely cost effective for you.
- s1artibartfast 3mo agodepends on where you are. In some parts of California you are out $10-20k just for the permitting and panel upgrade. Then there are proposals to charge homeowners based on insalled capacity. Part of NEM 3.0 in California was a $8/month per KW, but it was defeated. Who is to say it wont be back in 4.0? that would be about a $1000/yr fee for a 10 kw home system.
- Schiendelman 3mo agoIt would only apply to new installations, even in last year's proposal. I'm not aware of any part of California where a permit and panel upgrade would cost more than $7000. But if you're in those parts of California, your price is also 55c/kWh, not 35c. So... you're still better off.
- lavela 3mo agoWe need global minimum tax.
- cadamsdotcom 3mo agoJust to be contrarian: what we're talking about is "electricity use from economic activity". This should be good for Ireland but they'll need to build energy capacity to keep up. It's misplaced to be angry about datacenters themselves. There IS value being created, or people wouldn't use the tools. Construction creates jobs, manufacturing the machines in the buildings is a huge global industry; the value people gain in their work and play is considered worthwhile by them individually. In the aggregate it all happens in a boring building shaped like a box, mostly built out of the way for economic reasons, and which if well engineered can be pretty efficient for what it does for the human race.
- rogerrogerr 3mo ago> There IS value being created, or people wouldn't use the tools. While I do think there is value being created, I think this form of argument is not as watertight as it appears at first glance. Humans are very capable of behaving irrationally. I think there is a lot of harmful, negative “work” being done by AI today. Creating fake videos for Facebook, running girlfriend bots, automated scams, etc. Even employees just trying to be at the top of their employers’ AI token leaderboards. (So last month, I know). There is legitimate value being created, but I don’t think it’s obvious that the positive value is swamping the negative value 10:1. “There is value being created, or people wouldn’t buy the meth” - people do buy meth, quite enthusiastically, but any sane person would think allocating 23% of a nation’s electricity to a meth factory is a bad plan.
- pbgcp2026 3mo agoThe very first country in EU who will make electricity dirt-cheap will win the "Sovereign EU AI Tech" war. That includes produce cheap electricity, cutting the redtape and curbing the Unions mafia. So .. not happening. Back to the US ...
- paddim8 3mo agoIt's already dirt cheap in northern Sweden and northern Norway
- Waterluvian 3mo agoHow do the data center people protect their expensive data center from colossal rate hikes? They can’t just pick up and move. So has Ireland made an agreement with them in some way? I’m just imagining that if there’s no local value for three beyond some temp construction jobs and a handful of service jobs, surely they can just bilk them until they leave. So I imagine data center companies only locate where they can get very safe terms?
- morepork 3mo agoI assume that they sign up to long term contracts to secure the price of power. When it comes to renewal, the DC operator obviously has a sunk cost that they don't want to walk away from. But the electricity generators are also in the same boat. If the DC shuts up shop then there's x00 MW that the generator won't be able to sell and could suppress prices across the whole country. So both parties are incentivised to come to an agreement.
- ggm 3mo agoDo they pay for it, and the consequent infrastructure cost increases? If they pay full commercial rates or adjusted rates for behaviours which are net beneficial to the supply process, then isn't this just another form of revenue? If they have successfully avoided what they consider "externalities" thats a different matter. Like, polluting.
- halyconWays 3mo agoElectricity exists to be used, and we have essentially infinite free energy from nuclear power. Why are we wringing our hands pretending like we're going to run out of electrons? The days of hauling and burning ancient organic material to generate power should be over, and all these guilt-based arguments fallaciously require you to accept that as a premise.
- psd1 3mo agoQuite right. I built my sodium reactor while the subsidies were in effect and only paid €4000. It's almost paid off already, and as a nice bonus, i get spent control rods, which attract wildlife.
- bawana 3mo agoA similar thing happened in greece, but not with data centers. The railroads, airports,shipping ports were privatized and bought by foreign investors. Now the money from those services leaves the country making the greek economy poorer and weaker.
- arjie 3mo agoGood work by them. An incredibly clean use of power with strong revenue. As industries go, this is a pretty good use of land and energy.
- psd1 3mo agoI would have agreed with that two years ago, to the extent that crypto isn't mined in DCs. But AI is mined in DCs, and looks a bit frothy. Is it delivering value to someone? yes; is it delivering value in the round? jury is still out.
- librasteve 3mo agoalso they need the tax to pay for the Irish Navy to prevent Putin from cutting the fiber
- dyauspitr 3mo agoGood, force the world to build more energy production and mandate all data centers have to be powered by solar+batteries.
- infra_ops_cloud 3mo ago[flagged]