How Ireland is working towards cloud sustainability

Simo Edward • 11 November 2024

Data centres are as vital as they are power-hungry. Learn how Ireland is working towards cloud sustainability.

In 2024, it's no exaggeration to say that data centres are as vital to the business world as electricity and running water.

Imagine a dystopian scenario where all the world's data centres go down – from corporate hyper-facilities to on-premise servers. The level of disruption is unthinkable. Transport, medicine, financial transactions – all would be put on hold.

It's not hard to see why data centres are so important. But they have a dirty secret. The vast majority are power-hungry. And we mean hungry, accounting for around three percent of the world's energy consumption.

This makes data centres a double-edged sword. On the one hand, they keep the digital economy afloat. On the other, they present challenges to businesses, governments and consumers with regard to climate targets.

Sustainability has never been more important. So, how can we reconcile our need for cloud technologies with our need for a liveable planet?

It's a question that's being tackled across the world. But it's especially relevant in a country like Ireland, where data centre infrastructure is widespread and growing.

In this article, we look at how Ireland is working towards cloud sustainability. But first of all, why do data centres use so much energy?

Why are data centres power-hungry?

The simple answer is that data centres need power to run their servers. Look online for a video of an AWS or Google hyperscale data centre. These are huge, sprawling facilities that require huge amounts of electricity.

It's not just keeping the servers humming, either. It's also the fact that servers heat up when used. Additional energy is required to cool them down and prevent them from overheating. The alternative is for the servers to slow down or stop altogether.

Data centres also consume significant quantities of water. This is because many facilities use evaporative cooling systems. Some, however, are exploring closed-loop water cooling systems and rainwater systems.

The other issue is uptime. Businesses and consumers alike now expect a high level of service availability. There's no way to achieve this without data centre usage – so if data centres are unsustainable, high uptime is unsustainable, too.

What's the situation in Ireland?

Ireland is a hotbed of data centre activity – but it hasn't all been plain sailing. Witness the moratorium on data centre construction in 2022.

The government paused the construction of new data centres in response to concerns about the pressure these facilities could place on the national grid.

Ireland isn't the only country to have taken this step. Singapore and the Netherlands have done so, too. In all these cases, it's about balancing the needs of a growing digital economy with climate and sustainability targets.

In practice, however, construction in Ireland has pressed on. At the time of writing, 14 data centres are being built, with 40 more getting planning permission.

Billy Durie, Global Sector Head of Data Centres at Aggreko, puts it like this:

"The growth of the data centre market across Europe has been substantial, especially in Ireland. However, with this expansion comes a greater need to ensure this growth remains sustainable, something that the adoption of greener technologies will go a long way to help with."

He continues: "Increasing the already prominent use of decentralised power systems is paramount if the industry is to make itself self-sufficient. Using renewables is a part of this, but there needs to be an emphasis on using bridging solutions, as they are the key towards tackling the here-and-now for data centres."

Eamon Ryan, the Minister for the Environment, strikes a similar note. In an interview with the Financial Times, he reiterates Ireland's place in the world as a data centre hub, while insisting they must "work within the climate limits we have committed to".

"The data centres," he says, "are a really important, beneficial sector for our country. We have a huge advantage of having them here in terms of the potential industries that are based here that come with it."

The solution? Data centres, he says, must embrace low-carbon electricity, renewable energy generation and demand management.

What's next?

Until recently, data centres in Ireland have been mostly concentrated in the Greater Dublin Area. However, the infrastructure is spreading into other counties such as Galway, Mayo, Clare, Cork and Meath.

There are two sides to this. First, it reflects a desire to distribute the economic benefits of the cloud across the country. This could help bridge the "digital divide" between the capital and the rest of Ireland.

But it's also about managing the distribution of energy and balancing the capacity needs of different regions. Combined with greater use of green technologies, this could alleviate the strain on the national grid and allow Ireland to commit to data centre infrastructure and its climate targets simultaneously.

Why is Ireland an attractive location for data centres?

Ireland isn't unique in being a data centre hub. But it's long been a technology hotspot. Why?

There are a few overlapping reasons for this. A big one is its workforce. Ireland is famous for its IT literacy and skilled workforce. Cloud technologies need experts – and Ireland has them in droves.

Then there are the tax incentives. Ireland has a relatively low corporation tax rate, which encourages cloud firms to choose it as a location for new data centres.

Finally, there's the climate. Data centres in Ireland need cooling. But they need far less than countries with similar economies but hotter climates. Singapore, for instance, is on par economically but faces huge challenges with cooling infrastructure.

The intersection of data centres and climate targets isn't going anywhere. Ireland is an interesting test case of how the needs of both can be balanced, managed and improved.

Ascend Cloud Solutions is a cloud consultancy based in Cork, Ireland. Our cloud computing solutions help organisations across the globe accelerate their ambition and make the cloud work harder. Need our support? Don't hesitate to get in touch for a fact-finding consultation.

< Older Post

Newer Post >