As students begin to graduate into a new landscape of employment and geography, data centres will undoubtedly play a large role in shaping both. A decade ago, data centres weren’t as significant as they are today, evident in how much of the national electricity grid they took up: 5 per cent in 2015 as opposed to 23 per cent in 2025. This is close to the metered electricity consumed by every urban household combined.
In 2021, the Commission for the Regulation of Utilities (CRU) issued a policy stopping new data centres from connecting to the grid. This led to a year-long pause so that a new framework on regulation could be constructed. In 2025, the CRU published a policy paper with the following decisions: 1) Data centres above 10 MegaVolt-Amper (MVA) have to provide their own onsite generation to match their maximum demand; 2) Data centres above 1 MVA must meet at least 80 per cent renewable energy demand; 3) Data centres would be tiered, with each tier having different obligations; 4) if a data centre met its own generation requirements, Mandatory Demand Curtailment would not apply; and 5) Data centres powered by onsite fossil fuel generation were not in line with Ireland’s national policy. It also forecasted that energy demands from data centres would reach 31 per cent by 2034.
Despite the CRU heavily regulating data centres, it still looms over the present and future of the island. The Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications, Eamon Ryan, explained that data centers were part of Ireland’s larger enterprise strategy and the CRU’s renewable energy requirements were sufficient for data centers to ensure “the energy and circular economy challenges from digitalisation are aligned with [Ireland’s] climate objectives.”
The government has fixated on developing the role of data centres in providing jobs and encouraging further industry and enterprise growth in the country. Even during the pause, data centre demand grew by 10 per cent, while the rest of the economy grew by 2 per cent. The tech industry employs around 140,000 people and is worth over €52 billion. There is around €7 billion in cloud infrastructure active in Ireland presently and provides direct employment for over 20,000 people. Minister Jack Chambers and Peter Burke have heavily emphasised the economic importance of the sector for the economy.
On the other hand, climate activists and environmental groups like Friends of the Earth have highlighted how data centres and the CRU’s recommendations still undermine the government’s carbon budget obligations. In 2022, a People Before Profit Councillor in South Dublin, Madeline Johansson, proposed and passed an amendment which banned the construction of new data centres in South Dublin zoning areas. These measures were opposed by pro-data centres and tech organisations such as IDA Ireland, Enterprise Ireland, and Cloud Infrastructure Ireland. Even in 2022, during the pause, the amendment was inspired by outages in the Clondalkin area due to existing data centres. In 2024, a new data centre by Google was proposed in the Grange Castle region, which was significantly contested by the group Extinction Rebellion Ireland (ERI).
For students, especially those in STEM, data centres are of increasing importance. With the government’s claim that employment will be created through data centres, the environmental and social threats are also equally noteworthy. Furthermore, with a growing embrace of AI, the demand for data centres in Ireland and around the world will only continue to increase. The world of students will graduate into one dominated by questions of the physical as well as immaterial places of data centres within and outside of Ireland.
