Green Party comes out in favour of Mayo data centre proposal
The Green Party in Mayo has stated it is 'broadly open' to the establishment of a data centre at the former Asahi plant in Killala - contrary to opposition from best-selling author Sally Rooney and other vocal objectors.
However, the party said that data centres in Mayo, like all big energy users, would have to live within our climate obligations, and that any planning permission for the Mayo Data Hub should include provision for a battery plant to ensure that the centre could run off 100% wind energy, generated close-by.
Ireland, it said, was a good location for data centres because of our cool climate.
In addition, Killala could be particularly suitable because of its suitability for renewables and because it is close to new and existing intercontinental fibre connections.
Mayo Green Party chairperson Micheál Ó Conaill said that data centres were important to Ireland’s digital and economic future, and that it was too simplistic just to dismiss them out of hand.
They were essential to modern life and stored much more than advertisements, an argument Ms Rooney had made.
He also said that if a data centre in Killala was to employ 20 people – also dismissed by objectors – it would be equivalent of 20,000 jobs in Dublin.
“Data centres support a wide range of applications. They let us make phonecalls.
"They include cloud services, which most of us use every day.
"They support financial services, healthcare, education services, or in the case with Storm Eowyn just a few weeks ago, real time information on weather, maps for electricity and water faults, or eircodes to allow emergency services to get to where they need to go fast.
"The claim that data centres exist primarily for online advertising is an oversimplification.”
“North Mayo is a relatively unconstrained grid area.
"We have lots of wind power here and when the wind is blowing, a lot of that power is dumped at night because there’s no demand.
"Instead, this curtailed energy could be used and stored by the data centre. In addition, excess heat from the data centre could be used to provide low-carbon district heating and hot water to Killala town,” he outlined.
He said that the new policy direction on data centres proposed by the Commission for the Regulation of Utilities (CRU) this week seemed to strengthen the case for the location of data centres outside of urban and constrained areas, and close to energy sources.
The CRU issued new draft policy that will require data centres to make public their carbon emissions and use of renewables.
It also details new policies for connecting data centres to the national grid.
At the moment, new centres are mandated to provide generation or storage to match the amount of energy they use.
In a change to this, the generation or storage can be near the new centre, and not just onsite.
In addition, Eirgrid and ESB Networks must consider the location of any new data centres and take into account if they are in a “constrained” region.