Der Regierungsplan für nachhaltige Rechenzentren sei wie „nachhaltiges Rauchen“, sagt TD
https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2026/06/17/government-plan-for-sustainable-data-centres-is-like-sustainable-smoking-td-says/
Von homecinemad
Der Regierungsplan für nachhaltige Rechenzentren sei wie „nachhaltiges Rauchen“, sagt TD
https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2026/06/17/government-plan-for-sustainable-data-centres-is-like-sustainable-smoking-td-says/
Von homecinemad
12 Kommentare
Data centers are probably the the best thing you could sink your money into if you had that kind of money. So off the bat the idea we should ever bend over backwards to help the build them or subsidise them etc is nonsense. But we also need data centres so we need to find a way to make them work for us. Like a requirement you need to at least build 1:1 renewable power generation. Not just rock up with a jet turbine and an infinite diesel and make puppy dog eyes to the government.
We can have data centres and also do it right. It’s not either or.
I work in tech, I think there is definitely some things to argue about with data centre expansion but also I think there is some parts of this that are getting strong pushback that might bite us later. Like I definitely think there should be some element of this from a planning standpoint, electrical supply being taken from households meaning our prices go up, they can cover that with revenue but this is a huge cost. If anything I think companies should be not only paying for whatever works are needed ahead of installation but I think they should be paying up front for any usage in advance and I think there should be an extra levy on top, all of that money should be then used to not only cover the electrical cost for the data centres but also providing a better quality of service for households too. It is a nobrainer.
The flipside regardless of trying to ensure the data centres are built in a sustainable way is we badly need to get data centres in order to ensure our sovereignty from a compute standpoint. Having our data shipping anywhere else means that you are at the whim of wherever it goes. A lot of the expansion worldwide right now is going on in the US who have stuff like the CLOUD act and other laws which violate any non-American person’s privacy. As in if the data is stored on any US company’s infrastructure in the cloud they can view it without a warrant as long as it hits the bar of „national security“ which has regularly been a very blurry definition in the eyes of the American court system. It being on the island means it is under our laws and preferably in an entity based in Ireland or the EU and not the US.
What’s interesting is I’m currently seeing loads of videos on tiktok from America of small rural towns being plagued by poorly planned data centres that are emitting nonstop noise pollution and contaminating the water supply. Is our planning system stopping something similar? Does nobody live near a data centre in Ireland?
I find it hard to get worked up the data centres.
The backlash against datacentres in Ireland is largely populist in nature and not really based on anything except the fact that it’s trendy to give out about them.
On an environmental level, datacentres are about the cleanest industry you can get.
Concerns about water usage, are very region-specific problems in the US especially where water ownership is private and some states have already had critical shortages for years. Not relevant in our context, really.
Our main issue is power generation, in that our grid doesn’t generate enough of it in order to ramp-up supply to data centres in a way that doesn’t affect overall grid prices.
So „sustainable“ datacentres are very much a thing. A set of planning requirements where the DC cannot be commissioned until it has provisioned its own (renewable) power source (or has built an equivalent facility adding capacity to the grid). Or if it wants to commission without a power source, it pays a premium on power from the grid, increasing every year until the DC fulfills its power-generation requirements.
Anyone saying they aren’t so bad is gonna be eating their words in a couple of years.
Just wait for it. Either fight them now for proper regulations and use of our energy or it’s going to be too late.
I work in a company building them and they’re only getting bigger and more energy extensive lol
Sustainable suicide
There is „green DCs“ that use 100% renewable wlenergy in ireland. Just make this the only option and massively build out our wind energy infra,while letting the worlds biggest tech companies pay for it.
When a sector goes from basically 0 (couple of percent) to over 20% in about 7 years, it has an effect.
Anyone claiming that the explosion in data centres hasn’t increased prices for consumers can be dismissed until they atone for their obvious lies. I can’t think of many markets with inelastic demand that could drop demand by 20% and not have at least a proportional decrease in supply. Unless the market was rigged to guarantee profits of course…
The phrase „Pissing on me and calling it rain“ comes to mind
Once they’re built, and the bulk of the jobs they bring end with construction finishing, what actual benefit do we get?
We just need to get the data centers onto the patch! Problem solved 🤣