Ireland’s energy decarbonisation policy relies on a rapid shift from fossil fuels to electricity generation, in tandem with a major roll-out of renewable electricity. Our electricity demand has indeed increased, by 13 per cent since 2010, and Ireland has moved from the 13th highest electricity demand per capita across the EU 27 in 2010 to 7th in 2025. Unfortunately, this increase has very little to do with electrification, and far more to do with the massive increase in data centres.

Our demand per capita comes from a historically low base: electricity usage tracks economic activity, and a country with a higher-than-average GDP per capita should therefore expect to use more electricity per capita, all else equal. In this context, could the explosion in data centres merely be the industrial revolution Ireland never had? And if so, should we not recognise that this is the price a modern country pays to enjoy the benefits of industry-driven economic activity, and build the infrastructure necessary to serve our energy demands?

To answer this question, we need to understand the benefits of the economic activity enabled by the industry in question. The Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment commissioned a study by KPMG to that very end.

The study contains a lot of very valuable data and information, and is worth reading in full and in detail. However, the benefits attributed to data centres operating in Ireland appear to conflate different, sometimes unrelated, impacts.

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