Data Centre carbon emissions and impact on Ireland's energy needs

Please explain how these centres destroy the local environment.

And what do Amazon and Microsoft sell? Cloud storage. It might not be their headline product but its something both have invested heavily in in recent years. Microsoft have been integral to enabling people to work from home with their cloud servers. All this data has to be stored somewhere. The reason its called the "cloud" is because the data is held not on your own device/on site server but in a remote data center like what they build in Ireland. In Microsoft case they have invested heavily in cloud computing. Look at Microsoft Office 365 and how heavily cloud computing is baked into its functionality. All that means data centers. So yes Ireland is known for cloud computing because large data centers are at the core of cloud computing. Without them cloud computing wouldn't work.

The same of stuff like Netflix and related services. One of the reasons you can have such high speed download speeds are data centers spread across the world that enable data to be stored relatively close to its users.

And if your issue is which global customers using these data centers its being absolutely hypocritical when it comes to global warming. Ireland due to its geography and natural resources outsources most of its heavy industry to the rest of the world ie oil production,car manufacturing, mining etc.

On a global scale one of the best ways of managing green house emissions is to minimise energy use. If data centers use less energy when built in Ireland when compared to the rest of the world its better for the environment. Assuming you want to keep all the things that data centers enable(such as this website). Its even better if a huge portion of that energy comes from renewable sources.

Do you believe wind energy developments should get a free pass when it comes to adhering to EU directives on habitats, birds etc?? I suggest you read up on the daily fines Ireland is paying for multiple failures on windfarm planning such as the Derrybrein case etc.

We are governed from Dublin. That is only true in terms of optics. Realistically, the decisions are made in Europe and the government here makes the small decisions between departments etc.

We know for a fact Michael Noonan was on the verge of making a speech saying bondholders would lose their money when EU under threat of bankrupting the country gave him no choice but to give the opposite speech.

I agree that as a nation we are getting taken for a ride again and again. What is the answer though?

All new homes are required to have renewable energy so I imagine similar rules apply to data centres so I presume solar panels are common on data centres but it would be a drop in the ocean of their demand. Distract heating works grand but Ireland is a rather mild climate for it and it requires tearing up everything to install it. You can't retrofit it so easily. Normally it is problem better just to insulate/ airtight new builds. Now if you have apartment towers or swimming pools nearby that might be a bit different.

It’s not up to the state owned ESB. You need to point the finger at the correct people.