Ireland's data centers use 23% of national electricity in 2025

Data from Ireland’s Central Statistics Office shows that in 2025 data centres consumed 7,663 GWh of electricity, representing 23% of the country’s total power use. This marks a rise from 5% in 2015 and a 10% year‑on‑year increase, with quarterly figures showing a 584% jump since 2015.

Ireland hosts about 89 data centres, most of them around Dublin and operated by hyperscalers such as Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, Google and Meta. The surge is driven by growing artificial‑intelligence workloads, which Gartner predicts will account for roughly 31% of global server‑energy consumption by 2026.

In response, the Irish Commission for Utilities (CRU) imposed a moratorium on new grid connections in 2021 and introduced a 2025 policy requiring large facilities to have on‑site flexible generation and to meet at least 80% of their annual electricity demand from new, unsubsidised renewable projects within six years. The situation has sparked broader debate about the environmental impact of AI‑driven data‑centre expansion worldwide.