Gino Kenny on data centres, energy demand and the Green Party
Gino Kenny warned that growing data centre development will drive huge electricity demand and risk shortages. He criticised the Government's stance and urged the Green Party to support a bill aimed at addressing the issue.
Warnings over possible blackouts
Gino Kenny opened by highlighting recent conjecture about potential blackouts and energy shortages, repeating that ministers and the Taoiseach have discussed guarantees of supply in the future. He framed the situation as extremely serious and tied future electricity demand to data centre expansion.
Data centre energy consumption and Clendarkin
Kenny pointed to data centres as a major cause of rising electricity needs and cited Clendarkin as an emerging data centre cluster. He said that TikTok plans to build a large data centre in Clendarkin that will consume "more energy and electricity in one day than the whole of Clendarkin for three months."
Critique of corporate model and job creation
Kenny described data centres as the "hyper corporate consumer" and argued that the business model treats users as the product. He also said the sector will create "very few" jobs despite its large energy footprint.
Call on the Green Party to support the bill
Kenny addressed the Green Party directly, asserting they have compromised environmental credentials by entering government and urging them to break ranks and back the proposed bill. He described the bill as reasonable and stressed its potential impact on ordinary people if not supported.
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Minister, over the past number of weeks there has been much conjecture of possible blackouts because of energy shortages and ministers and Taoiseach have said that there may be in the future there may be a guarantee supply of electricity. If it wasn't so serious this would be very funny because the seriousness is extremely serious and one of the reasons why there is going to be a huge demand for electricity is the data centres in the now and the medium term and most people will say what kind of purpose do data centres serve because they use so much energy and resources that we need at the moment and that's the kind of big question most of us will ask and data centres represent kind of the hyper corporate consumer of you are the product because that's what social media, Google, Facebook, TikTok are what they're all about, you are the product at the end of the day. And even in Clendarkin, Clendarkin now has become a quote unquote Ireland's data centre cluster and TikTok will build one of the biggest data centres in Europe in Clendarkin. That will consume more energy and electricity in one day than the whole of Clendarkin for three months. Now this stuff is incredible, it's incredible amount of energy that actually that will consume. And you ask the question how much jobs will this create? Very few, very few indeed. So Minister, and I say this to the Green Party as well, because if they were standing here, they would support this bill. And this bill is a very reasonable demand and it's a very reasonable bill in its essence. And I think, I mean, the Green Party have a lot to answer for, you know, they've entered government, they've compromised their environmental credentials on the basis of, you know, being in government on this, on this policy. And because they, if they were standing here, there's no doubt that they would fully, fully support this bill. So it says more about the Green Party, that they're not supporting this bill, than about us, than the ordinary people that this could have a huge, huge impact. So I say to the Green Party, it's not too late. You can break ranks and support this bill. Thank you. Thank you.
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