Big Tech’s AI dream turns into Ireland’s energy nightmare

For MEP Kelly, “The absolute priority has to be to keep the lights on,” he said. Although, he added, “we should not be in a position where we have to turn away business and investment.”

“A properly developed and modernized transmission system would be able to do both,” Kelly added.

In the meantime, Ireland’s Ministry of the Environment, Climate and Communications acknowledged in a statement that “not all demand for data [center] development can be accommodated sustainably” in the shorter term.

“Data [centers], like all large energy users, have to exist within the boundaries of our climate legislation and targets, as well as our energy security,” they said, echoing a similar warning from Irish climate and environment minister Eamon Ryan in an interview with the Financial Times.

The winners and losers

As tech giants Amazon, Microsoft and Google pump billions into Europe’s cloud infrastructure that powers AI, the availability of (ideally, cheap and green) energy may emerge as a top criterion in determining their next investment destinations.

“The main data center markets, so places like Dublin and Frankfurt, are going to be kind of overrun with a need for power,” said Jesse Noffsinger, one of the authors of a new report by consultancy McKinsey, which forecasts that hyperscalers will drive about two-thirds of the demand for data centers by 2028. “We’ll see, in a lot of cases, the data center needs [to] migrate to other places,” he explained.