A new report has shown that Data Centres have been offered a cut price deal for gas – on the condition that they accept the possibility of disruption to their supply.
This same report from the CRU said that connection of data centres to the gas grid could cause shortages by the winter of 2032/2033, in the event of a harsh winter.
The sheer demand generated by these centres would mean that we couldn’t import enough gas to heat homes, hospitals and businesses.
This scenario has been created by the government themselves recklessly rolling out the red carpet to data centres with no strings attached says Lynn Boylan.
“Given that 27% of households connected to the gas grid are in arrears, it’s another insult to people for the data centres that are part of driving up the cost of energy, are being offered discounts, while households have been left in the cold by the government.” Lynn said.
The Sinn Féin MEP for Dublin explained that the gas grid may be able to meet demand if the winter was a mild one, but if it was a colder than average winter, then the grid will simply not have the gas it needs to cope.
“It’s ridiculous that the CRU’s proposals to ease the drain on our electricity grid from data centres, is just to plug them into the gas grid – rather than to even propose a moratorium on connecting the centres to the grid.”
The demand that these centres would place on the grid is “off the charts” according to Lynn.
She said “Seventeen data centres would have a peak gas demand of six 500 MWe Combined Cycle Gas Turbine (CCGT) generators. For context, the slightly smaller 445-megawatt Whitegate CCGT generator in Co Cork provides power for 445,000 homes.
“The cheerleaders of data centres in government will use this as an excuse to manufacture consent for an expensive, a destructive LNG terminal. Instead of saying to big tech enough is enough, they want to give them anything they want regardless of the impact on the public and climate.
“This level of mismanagement is a sure sign that the government is repeating the exact same mistakes it made with data centres and the electricity system.
“Again, rather than pushing back on the demands of big tech companies and their data centres when their usage pushed our grid into ‘amber alerts’, which mean there’s an increased risk of blackouts, they instead spent hundreds of millions of public money on temporary emergency generation to avert the worst blackouts.
“The government approach to the data centre question is reckless, and risks harming development and investment in other key areas, including housing and infrastructure.”
