Full coverage: Data centres

Plans by Amazon Web Services to invest £8 billion in the UK are in stark contrast to its comments on the Irish market as Labour tailors its pitch to the industry.

Tech-driven power demand is adding strain to Ireland’s energy infrastructure, but it also supports the investment needed to make it greener. Don’t believe any of the black-and-white answers to this thorny question.

Wexford-born Kieran Furlong co-founded and leads one of the world's most exciting fusion energy start-ups. It just had a big breakthrough in a field he feels will be of great importance to AI, data centres and Ireland.

Restructuring saw AWS’s Irish unit change hands within the Amazon group at the end of last year. The price paid was a fair reflection of the bricks, mortar and servers on its books but did not reflect its runaway growth.

Echelon Data Centres founder Niall Molloy says global tech giants are making decisions now on the location of the computing power needed for the AI revolution – it is a big opportunity if Ireland can overcome "extreme zealotry" in policymaking.

Data centres have been frozen out from Dublin because of grid bottlenecks. This has forced them and renewable energy developers to think outside the box, with positive outcomes on the horizon.

As more and more electricity comes from wind and solar, balancing supply and demand becomes more complex, say Deloitte energy experts with both a global and an Irish focus.

Large energy users are frozen out of new power connections, leading to frustration across all industries connected to the national grid. Market participants are offering solutions to ease the many bottlenecks while achieving climate targets.

It is only a matter of time until the energy supply constraint is fixed through investment but a significant question remains: Is it strategic for Ireland to be home to so many data centres?

When the electricity grid operator failed to meet its targets during Covid, it cut performance-related pay, triggering a dispute with workers. Meanwhile, Eirgrid warns that curbs on new data centres in Dublin will be needed in the long term.