Unsustainable growth threatens climate targets and electricity supply
Responding to news that the state saw two amber alerts, (a situation where electricity generation is running low) in recent days, People Before Profit TD Bríd Smith said the state was walking into a potential crisis in the coming years if it continued with its policy of facilitating data centres.
She said: “A direct consequence of this policy has been the continued reliance on gas fired turbines and other fossil fuel generators to plug the gap between renewable generation and demand. This latest amber alert again highlights the very real possibility that this state could stumble into power cuts for homes and business over the coming months and years. This is a direct result of allowing unbridled data centre construction.”
The TD was also critical of new regulations announced by the Commission for Regulation of Utilities (CRU) which would redirect data centres away from the Dublin region of constrained supply and insist they had their own back up generators and could come off the grid, if needed in emergency situation.
“The current measures do not deal with the core issue here, but simply move the problem around. The core issue is the unsustainable proliferation of data centres that will end up consuming over 30% of all power we generate regardless of where we situate them. That is simply not feasible if we are to meet climate targets by 2030. It’s a illusion to say we can power these centres with off shore wind; we need that power for homes, business and transport and at present rates we won’t see it at scale for a decade or more. Its time to realise that a continued encouragement of data centre building here is a disaster for ordinary people and climate.”
