Insights · analysis from the data
Insights: what the data says about Irish data centres and power
17 findings from our data on Irish data centres and power that the public debate mostly misses: where the extra electricity came from, who holds unused grid capacity, how much one company uses, what "bring your own power" means in practice, which offshore wind can serve data centres, the grid's 900 MW limit, why wholesale power is dear, where the grid has room, what data centres do to household bills and whether they take builders from housing. Each cites its sources and dates.
By StackPath · updated 10 October 2026 · methodology · corrections
- 01
Insight · power system
Since 2020, Ireland's extra data-centre demand ran on imported electricity
Since 2020, the extra electricity Irish data centres used was matched almost entirely by imports. From 2020 to 2025, demand rose 5.43 TWh, 4.63 TWh of it data centres, while net imports rose 6.19 TWh and Irish wind added 0.24 TWh (Ember; CSO, Jul 2026).
- 02
Insight · gas and on-site power
Bring your own power means bring your own gas
Under the CRU's December 2025 rules, a new data centre must bring dispatchable generation equal to its grid import capacity, and the licences filed so far show that mostly means gas. EPA licences and applications already cover about 2.0 GW (thermal) of plant meant to run as main or continuous power at data centres (EPA LEAP, Oct 2026).
- 03
Insight · grid connections
The data-centre grid capacity nobody is using yet
Irish data centres hold about 2.0–2.4 GW of contracted grid capacity, nearly all agreed before the November 2021 rules, but drew an average of 875 MW in 2025. That leaves roughly 1.0–1.4 GW unused (EirGrid; CSO, Jul 2026). Newcomers, meanwhile, face a frozen Dublin grid.
- 04
Insight · who uses the power
How much of Ireland's data-centre electricity does Amazon use?
Amazon's nine EPA-licensed Irish data-centre sites drew about 3.72 TWh from the grid in 2025, equal to 49% of the CSO's 7.7 TWh for all data centres. Because the two figures come from different sources, read it as a ceiling: roughly 40–50% (EPA annual environmental reports; CSO, Jul 2026).
- 05
Insight · Europe
Ireland is a customer, not a host, of Europe's AI build-out
Ireland hosts none of the EU's 19 AI Factories, which sit in 16 member states, and has no public bid to host an AI Gigafactory. The Government has instead committed €10m to buy compute from a French one if that bid wins. Yet data centres use 23.2% of Irish electricity (EuroHPC; CSO, Jul 2026).
- 06
Insight · water
Data-centre water in Ireland: where the '999 million litres' comes from
Licensed Irish data centres used about 1.05 billion litres of public water in 2025, roughly 0.17% of public supply. The widely quoted "999 million litres" is a sum of EPA annual environmental reports, and two sites, Meta Clonee and Equinix Blanchardstown, used 91% of it (EPA AERs, Oct 2026).
- 07
Insight · planning data
The data centres hiding in the planning register
A machine-learning search of 507,741 Irish planning applications found 69 data-centre applications that keyword searches miss: 61 confirmed by reading the files and 8 likely. They are described as "electrical rooms", "ICT facility", "data storage building" or "energy centre" (StackPath analysis, Oct 2026).
- 08
Insight · hardware
Server imports surged while data-centre building slowed
Ireland imported €12.7bn of servers, server parts and network equipment in the first 7 months of 2026, already more than all of 2025 (€12.2bn), though much is re-exported. The 12 months to July 2026 were up 121% on the year before, and €4.8bn stayed after exports (Eurostat Comext). New data-centre planning applications, meanwhile, fell sharply after 2021.
- 09
Insight · planning
Since 2021, most new data-centre plans end up at appeal
Before the CRU's November 2021 grid direction, 13% of new data-centre planning applications were appealed and 3% refused. Since then, 69% have been appealed and 25% refused, and the median appeal takes 23.5 months instead of 10.5 (planning registers and An Coimisiún Pleanála, Oct 2026).
- 10
Insight · offshore wind
Only the offshore wind farms that lost the State auction can power data centres
Only 1,175 MW of Ireland's planned offshore wind can count toward a data centre's 80% renewables match: Oriel and Arklow Bank 2, the two projects that lost the 2023 State auction. The 3,524 MW that won State support are excluded under CRU2025236, and no Phase 1 project has planning consent yet (Oct 2026).
- 11
Insight · grid stability
The 900 MW limit: why Ireland's grid can't lose more data-centre demand at once
EirGrid caps the demand Ireland's grid can lose in one fault at 900 MW. It plans for 90% of data-centre demand dropping off at once, so about 1,000 MW of data centres fills the limit, and EirGrid told the CRU that was reached in June 2026 (CRU202704, Jul 2026). The CRU's fix, Grid Code MPID 345, applies from 27 October 2026.
- 12
Insight · prices
Why Irish wholesale electricity is the dearest in Europe's big markets
Irish day-ahead electricity averaged €114.4/MWh in 2025, the highest of the 9 European markets we compare (Germany €89.4, Great Britain €94.4, France €61.1; Ember). Gas plant most likely set the Irish price in about 81% of half-hours over the last year (SEMOpx, estimate).
- 13
Insight · grid headroom
Where the grid has room: ESB capacity outside Dublin
ESB Networks' capacity heatmap shows 2,142 MVA of indicative spare demand capacity at its 38 kV stations outside Dublin, against 233 MVA inside the four Dublin councils (ESB Networks, compiled 12 December 2025). It is not a connection offer, and it leaves out the EirGrid transmission system, where large data centres connect.
- 14
Insight · bills
Do data centres push up household bills? What the evidence says
Probably yes, mainly through wholesale prices, but by an uncertain amount. Rerunning the Friends of the Earth model on independent data gives about €293 per household for 2021–23 (the study: €263) and €112–128 a year now, an upper-end estimate. The PSO levy split costs households a few euro a year; network charges cut both ways (CRU, checked Oct 2026).
- 15
Insight · AI infrastructure
What makes an AI data centre different, and where Ireland falls short
An AI data centre packs far more power into each rack: about 132 kW for a current NVIDIA rack against almost 9 kW for a typical one (Uptime Institute, 2025). It needs liquid cooling and very large sites, but not closeness to users. Ireland's strengths suit cloud computing and AI serving; its power limits weigh most on training.
- 16
Insight · measures
How good are Ireland's data centres for AI? The measures that matter
Judge a data centre on two levels: the building (PUE, water, heat reuse, power per rack) and the computers in it (chip efficiency, model FLOPs utilisation, goodput). Irish sites that reported to the EU averaged a PUE of 1.18 (2023 data), better than the EU's 1.36, but no public data show they can host today's 132 kW AI racks.
- 17
Insight · construction
Do data centres take builders from housing? What the numbers show
At their 2020 peak, data-centre projects directly employed about 14,200 people, roughly 10.4% of Irish construction workers (KPMG for DETE; CSO). By 2024 it was 3.5%. National figures show no consistent trade-off with housing, and construction pay rose 44% since 2015, close to 42% for all jobs (CSO).