Data centres and plant closures set the stage for years of shortage

What’s happening? Ireland is facing a massive energy crisis, with possible blackouts looming, according to the Environment Minister, Eamon Ryan, and Ireland’s electricity chiefs.

Don’t we already have an energy crisis?

Yes. The price of electricity and gas has soared this year, with some energy companies expected to raise prices for a fifth time by the end of the year.

So, what is new?

We already know that the price of buying power internationally has soared. But we are also facing huge domestic problems – two of our biggest powergenerating plants are down at a time when tech companies are building huge data centres that will suck massive amounts of electricity from the grid.

What is stored in these energydraining data centres?

Tech companies use them to store online content. One of the largest in the country is Facebook’s data centre in Clonee, Co. Meath, and the firm wants to build more. So that’s everything from your emails to pictures of you at your dog’s birthday, a video you shared of a chimp on a trampoline, smiley face emoticons, and your comment that reads: ‘LOL! OMG. I love ice-cream too! ROFL.’

So, we have an electrical grid that would blackout at any time. How much electricity do these data centres use exactly? Yesterday, a Maynooth University academic, Dr Patrick Bresnihan, told an Oireachtas committee that if all proposed data centres were to get the green light, they would use 70% of grid capacity by 2030.

And we’d have to run every home and business on the remaining 30%? Yes.

How bad is the problem? Bad indeed. EirGrid, which manages Ireland’s electricity grid, yesterday published its latest All-Island Generation Capacity Statement, which revealed that, so far this year, electricity regulators issued eight separate warnings that demand had pushed power reserves to the point at which unexpected faults risked possible blackouts.

Eight times?

Yes. And it is getting worse. EirGrid predicts that growing demand, including from data centres, along with coal and oil-burning plant closures, threatens serious electricity shortages in coming years. ‘We expect system alerts to be a feature of the system over the coming winters, and this winter is likely to be challenging,’ warned Mark Foley, EirGrid’s chief executive.

Is this a political issue?

Yes, especially in the last 24

hours. Taoiseach Micheál Martin said yesterday that everything that needs to be done will be done to ensure no power outages through the winter. He was reacting to Opposition outcry after Eamon Ryan warned yesterday that he could not be ‘absolutely certain’ there will be no power outages in the coming months, and also said that our energy supplies will be ‘tight’ for the next two to three years.

What’s the Taoiseach’s plan? The Fianna Fáil leader is hoping that reserve supply will see us through the winter and is ‘working with large energy users who have their own backup generation capacity’.

Don’t data centres have large oil and diesel-fired reserve generators? Yes, some of them have massive back-up generators. The Government will likely be asking/begging tech companies to switch to the reserve and stay off the grid.

But wouldn’t that be harmful to the environment?

Yes. But making sure there are no blackouts is the priority. As we’ll see, the Government is willing to pull some huge environmental compromises to get us through the shortage.

What is the immediate crisis this winter? Yesterday’s EirGrid report highlights the fact that two gasfired plants in Cork and Dublin are currently undergoing routine maintenance, but restarting them has been greatly delayed because of the Covid lockdown, including getting experts in from abroad.

Surely this country’s Government could get some foreign engineers in to speed up the process? Given that the Government’s future could depend on it, it would seem so, but it looks like the plants will be running again soon anyway.

But that’s just to get us through this winter. If our energy supply will be ‘tight’ for the next two or three years, what are we going to do? It turns out that the Government will likely be keeping coal and oil-burning electricity plants operating beyond their scheduled closing dates to avoid power cuts.

Which ones?

The Environment Minister said that, as a last resort, it would include Moneypoint in Clare, which runs on Colombian coal and is Ireland’s single biggest contributor to carbon emissions. Also, a short distance across the Shannon Estuary, there is the oil-fired Tarbert station in Kerry.

What? Should the Green Party now change its name to the Carbon Party? ‘We can’t have the lights go out,’ was Minister Ryan’s explanation for an extension that would throw Ireland’s carbon reduction plans into orbit.

When are these two plants due to close? Tarbert is due to close in 2023 and Moneypoint in 2025, but that’s a debatable point the ESB has fudged. See the Q&A on its website, for example: ‘Question: When will ESB stop burning coal at Moneypoint? Answer: ESB has long signalled its intent to cease burning coal at Moneypoint. This is part of our broader Brighter Future Strategy where we are committed to significantly increasing electricity generated across Ireland from renewable or zero-carbon sources.’

Wow. That’s very vague. Yes, and gives the Government plenty of leeway.

Surely the EU will have a few things to say about this? Oh yes. The Commission for Regulation of Utilities warned about this in a statement yesterday, in which it said that any extension for Tarbert and Moneypoint could require planning permission, licensing derogations or ‘other decisions’ relating to the Industrial Emissions Directive, the EU law aimed at reducing greenhouse gases. Ireland could face hefty EU fines if it doesn’t keep to its commitment to cut carbon emissions by 7% every year between now and 2030 – a feat that would become almost impossible if we were to keep the Moneypoint plant open.

Couldn’t we just save electricity by stopping any new data centres and shutting Moneypoint?

And risk a pullout by big tech companies such as Google, Facebook and Apple? The Government would open a coal mine in Leinster House before they’d let that happen.

But the Opposition seems to want to stop new data centres?

Yes, the Social Democrats raised a motion on it in the Dáil yesterday, but the Government voted against it, saying it’s better to ‘manage’ the data centre electrical use. Apple CEO Tim Cook must have been quaking in fear yesterday when Mr Ryan said that the data centres ‘will have to live within the carbon budget’, while also adding that stopping the data centres was too much of a ‘blunt instrument’.

Are there any other answers?

Yes, Minister Ryan said yesterday that there are a range of solutions, including ‘micro generation’, in which homes and businesses could feed electricity back into the grid when they are not using it.

That sounds like amazing, high-tech, futuristic stuff. Do we have this kind of thing in place? No. But Mr Ryan said that there would soon be a proposal.

A proposal? We could be facing mass blackouts in the coming years? It’s possible. Eirgrid warned yesterday that we could have an energy shortfall of 1,050 megawatts (MW), one fifth of Ireland’s peak requirements, by the year 2025. So, in three years and a few months, we could be 20% shy of what we need to keep the lights on during peak day time hours?

Yes. Somehow we’re going to have to find the electricity, or dramatically decrease the demand.