The man in Data Centre Alley couldn’t conceal his shock: ‘You’re screwed’

Ashburn in Loudoun County in Virginia, 30 miles outside of Washington DC, has earned the name Data Centre Alley for a reason. Driving around the area recently, the industrial landscape is astonishing. Loudoun County has 199 data centres. They loom roadside, some made to look like offices, with fake windows barely taking the edge off their ugliness.
Another global hub for data centre clustering is, of course, Dublin. In Ireland, data centre development can be characterised as the largest industrial development rollout this country has ever seen in terms of pace, scale and impact on our energy infrastructure, and by far the majority are in Dublin. The outgoing Government consistently framed the industry as essential to the anchoring the broader Big Tech industry in Ireland. But at what cost? Data centres now consume 21 per cent of all metered electricity nationally. Our data centre figures can be a little opaque, but we have at least 82 operating right now, 14 under construction, and about 40 more approved for planning.
I was in Loudoun County to meet Ashburn District supervisor Mike Turner. This summer, Turner published a White Paper titled Loudoun County, Virginia: Data Centre Capital of the World: A Strategy for a Changing Paradigm. The White Paper is a good read for anyone interested in a region dealing with a constrained electricity grid. It lays out future strategy and options to balance the demands of industry and place.
Dublin and Loudoun County are obviously not like-for-like. But both are contending with huge energy demands from data centres. Loudoun County (population 440,000) earns a lot from taxing data centres. “The reality is,” Turner says, “on our budget this year, we will get $895 million from our data centres”. South Dublin (population 301,000), where the outgoing Minister of State Peter Burke intervened in 2022 to order South Dublin County Council to overturn an effective ban on data centre development in the area, earned just under €143.5 million from all commercial rates in 2023.
The data centre industry’s existential issue – in Ireland and globally – is the explosion of artificial intelligence (AI). The power required to meet AI’s data processing demands will dwarf the current power requirements of data centres. Existential issues are hard to get one’s head around, but there is a reason the data centre industry is scrambling for energy solutions, and also quite adept at marketing its role in contributing to the growth of “green” energy. But the fundamental of sustainability is about replacement and reduction, not adding more demand to the mix.
When I put it to Turner that tech companies are investing in wind and solar farms in Ireland – Meta has bought the entire output of two of the largest solar farms in Ireland in Wexford and Meath, and Amazon owns wind farm projects in Cork and Connemara, for example – he was sceptical about “annyone who talks solar and wind and data centres in the same sentence”, describing it as “smoke and mirrors”.
“It’s not going to happen. Like I said in the paper, solar is a 23.3 capacity factor. Wind is a 35.5 capacity factor.” In Turner’s paper, nuclear power is cited as having a 93.1 per cent capacity factor, biomass 50.6 and gas 61.7. In June, the Irish Academy of Engineering published a document on small modular reactors (SMRs). “Ireland needs to keep an open mind about the possibility of SMRs contributing to the achievement of net zero energy by 2050,” the report said. “A passive acceptance that the country might need SMRs is not sufficient, and an active response is required to ensure that, if SMRs prove to be economic, safe and reliable by the 2030s, Ireland is prepared to consider changes to national policies and legislation to permit their deployment.”
[ Will nuclear really power the AI boom?Opens in new window ]
This week, the Irish data centre industry will gather at the Data Centres Ireland conference at the RDS in Dublin. Last month, Google signed an agreement to purchase nuclear energy from SMRs in a deal with Kairos Power in the US. The first of those SMRs will be operational by 2030.
The Irish public deserves to know from our politicians and the Irish data centre industry what Ireland’s strategy is with regard to nuclear-powered data centres. This is the reality for an industry now embedded in Ireland’s energy landscape.
Turner is a serious man. A former air rescue helicopter and fighter pilot, he is a Gulf War veteran, who served on the US Central Command before and during that war, and on the joint staff in the Pentagon in the mid-90s. At one point during our conversation, he turned to a staff member to express his shock. “They’re using 21 per cent of their electricity to feed their data centres, nationally,” he told her, “Ireland. Twenty-one per cent.”
“We’re at 1 per cent,” she said, “nationally. We’re going to be moving up to 5.” Turner continued: “Everyone is all aghast that we’re moving up to 5 per cent nationally.”
Turner’s expertise is matched by his directness. On Ireland’s 21 per cent figure, combined with Government policy having facilitated almost unfettered data centre development, and energy demands only increasing, his assessment was blunt. “Well, I wish I could say it in a more diplomatic way, but you’re screwed.”
[ The Irish Times view on data centres and energy: Ireland needs to play the long gameOpens in new window ]