Data centres’ electricity consumption has soared since Apple shelved its Athenry plans
gives a startling insight into the growth of the sector in the past decade, as well as the wider impact on society.
In 2015, the year Apple’s plans for Athenry were first announced, data centres accounted for about 5 per cent of all electricity consumed in Ireland. By the time the proposal was shelved in 2018, that consumption rate increased to 8 per cent.Last year, that rate had more than doubled to 18 per cent of all electricity consumed in the Republic — about the same as all urban homes in the State.
The growth is staggering to be sure, and questions about whether the grid is able to handle these power hogs were thrown into sharp relief by a warning from EirGrid a few hours later of possible power cuts amid a shortage of wind and solar energy. How different things would be if Apple had been allowed to build its data centres in Athenry is an open question, but stalling that development doesn’t seem to have hurt Ireland as a location for these warehouses full of servers. At a time when households are trying to cut energy use amid inflation and environmental concerns, there is little doubt that data centres’ power consumption is only going to keep going up.
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