Sinn Féin MEP Lynn Boylan has launched a report examining whether data centres are paying their fair share, or if households are being forced to pick up the cost for upgrades to the grid.
The report ‘By Design, Not by Default: How Regulatory Discretion Socialises the Cost of Data-Centre Expansion in the EU: A Case Study of Ireland’ was written by Eve Ryan, a researcher from Trinity College Dublin.
The report examines the regulatory decisions that determine how the costs of expanding and reinforcing the electricity network are allocated between data centres and other users like households.
The Dublin MEP said:
“This report shows how households are being put on the hook for costs associated with the enormous increase in electricity demand from data centres.
“While data centres pay “connection fees”, they are not paying the full cost of the grid reinforcement that their demand requires.
“Rather than ensuring the costs associated with the increased demand from data centres are fully borne by those driving that demand, the current system spreads some of those costs across the wider electricity system, including households.
“In effect, a portion of the cost of accommodating data centre expansion is covered by electricity network charges and buried in bills paid by ordinary consumers. It’s like a secret charge.
“This creates a situation where the cost of upgrading the grid is being borne by households, despite the demand that makes these upgrades necessary being driven by data centres.
Lynn pointed to Castlebaggot substation as a stark example of this, where a substation built to support housing in west Dublin, but all available demand was consumed by data centre demand, before it was even complete. The substation was built at a cost €100 million euro but went to private benefit.
“What’s worse is that this is a political choice. There is no law or rule that’s forcing Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael to have households pay this charge.
“There are alternatives. We could design a system that shows in the open how data centres are driving up costs. We could design a system that forces data centres to pay the costs associated with additional network infrastructure.
“Instead, the government designed a system that heaps extra costs on people who are facing the highest electricity costs in Europe while more than 320,000 household in arrears.
“The government needs to explain why ordinary households should be forced to carry the costs of the richest companies in the world.
“If data centres are driving the need for additional grid investment, they should pay their fair share.
CRÍOCH/ENDS
See the report here
