Ireland’s power grid is facing unprecedented strain, largely due to the rapid growth of data centers across the country. This mounting pressure on the nation’s electric grid has led the South Dublin County Council to reject a more than $500 million proposed data center investment by one of the world’s largest tech giants.
Google had been planning to build this data center just outside the Irish capital of Dublin since 2011, putting over half a billion dollars towards the effort.
The council said its decision to reject the plan was based on concerns that Google failed to provide sufficient detail on how the proposed site would impact the nation’s already-stressed power supply once it becomes operational in 2027.
Data centers, which house vast amounts of digital information and are critical to the operations of tech companies, have been taking up increasingly larger portions of the power supply from nations across the globe.
This is especially true in Ireland, where data centers consumed approximately 18% of the country’s total energy in 2022. Experts warn that this figure could rise to a third of Ireland’s electric use by 2026 if the trend continues.
Google has yet to publicly comment on the rejection of its data center plan. The company now has one month to appeal the council’s decision.
