Plans by E-commerce giant Amazon to build three huge data centres at the IDA Business and Technology Park at the Donore Road on the Meath side of Meath/Louth boundary have received a setback after the national environmental watchdog, An Taisce, lodged an appeal with An Bord Pleanála.
Work is well underway on the first of the three data centres planned for the site and in June Meath County Council granted planning permission for the second but An Taisce wants a halt called to the plan which they say is an infringement of the Environmental Impact Assessment process which requires that direct, indirect and cumulative environmental impacts be fully assessed and mitigated.
“Data centres are the built embodiment of the internet and data storage, housing rows of servers that rely on vast amounts of energy” they say in their appeal.
“Accounting for a considerable portion of the industry and its greenhouse gas emissions, they are identified as having the “fastest growing carbon footprint from across the whole ICT sector”.
“Ireland has been called the “data centre capital of Europe” due to its favourable climate and proclivity to Foreign Direct Investment (FDI)” they said adding that there are already 70 data centres in operation using 900MW with a further eight under construction expected to use an additional 250MW.
“This proliferation of data infrastructure has largely gone unchecked, and data centres now consume 11% of Ireland’s total grid-generated electricity. The Irish Academy of Engineers has projected that this will increase to 31% by 2027.
Local Authorities and An Bord Pleanála are granting permission for data centres on a case-by-case basis without adequately addressing the cumulative impacts of energy use and concomitant greenhouse gas emissions.
An Taisce pointed out that according to the Irish Academy of Engineers, data centres will add between 1.5 and 3 million tonnes of CO2 to Ireland’s overall greenhouse gas emissions by 2028.
“This trajectory is not conducive to the achievement of Ireland’s legally binding EU renewable energy targets or the realisation of its national climate policy goals” they said.
Amazon said the data centre will provide infrastructure for its cloud computing services which are used by millions of customers globally and that the proposed development represented a significant investment that would create significant economic and employment benefits for the area.
It is thought that each of the three proposed plants would employ 40 – 50 people.
