Wherever you fall on the spectrum of opinions about data centres, it is undeniable that the Government is doing a troubling amount of PR on behalf of global tech and AI giants. A case in point is the now-notorious KPMG report published this summer and commissioned by the Department of Enterprise.
Earlier this week, a group of Irish academics published their own research into the data centre sector in Ireland, using publicly available data to draw their conclusions. Perhaps the salient point of the report is that due to the paucity of actual information available about the data centre sector’s footprint, it’s difficult to do anything other than make, at best, educated estimates.
We do know from Central Statistics Office research that large energy users – mostly data centres – consumed almost a quarter of Ireland’s electricity last year. It is far more difficult to get a read on how much water the resource-intensive industry uses. The academics behind the report suggest it could be about the equivalent of 340,600 homes, or 18.5 per cent of the total number of occupied dwellings in the Republic. However, that is an estimate calculated using a global methodology that the UN used to calculate the sector’s international footprint.
Making concrete judgments about the sector’s economic benefits makes for similarly tough sledding. But that certainly didn’t stop Minister for Enterprise Peter Burke from trying. In a press conference late last month, the Fine Gael TD said the controversial KPMG report aimed to address an “absence of evidence of what the economic contribution of data centres was to the economy”.
Into that breach stepped the department-commissioned document, making a series of claims about the benefits of data centres that seemed outlandish at face value and fall apart under scrutiny.
[ ‘Nothing underhanded’ in department’s changes to data centre report, says BurkeOpens in new window ]
One example of this, as the academics highlighted in their report, is Burke and the Coalition’s attempts to link data centre development with Ireland’s “twin transitions” – digitalisation and decarbonisation.
At the press conference last month, the minister attempted to tie data centre development to the delivery of offshore renewable energy.
“How do we get the investment to deliver those projects?” he asked. “Essentially, large energy users are that driver. They are bringing that growth.”
Cantillon views that claim with some scepticism. More pertinently though, why is Burke making such claims with such certainty when there is so little concrete data to support them?
