Data Centres Are Driving Up Your Electricity Bills
LIKE many people in Drogheda I increasingly dread the electric bill dropping through the letterbox or in my case into my email basket.
For many households it’s becoming ever more difficult to pay so it’s not surprising that nationwide there are over 315,000 households behind on their electricity bill.
Of these over 176,000 households are severely behind, having missed payments for 90 days or more and are obviously not able to pay for what, like water, is an essential utility for living a normal life.
And it’s going to get worse as from the start of next month Electric Ireland will increase residential electricity prices by eight percent with gas prices rising by 7.7% at the same time.
What makes these increases all the more galling is that ordinary households are subsidising the electricity of the ever-increasing numbers of data centres, including the proposed one on the old Premier Periclase plant.
It was recently revealed that Irish households are already paying 45% more for electricity than the average price across the EU yet, instead of helping consumers the Government is standing up for the data centres.
Just last week Tánaiste Simon Harris urged the public against portraying data centres as “bogeymen” when it comes to rising electricity rates claiming the tech sector creates thousands of jobs and generates billions in taxes.
That may be the case but as Aontú TD Paul Lawless pointed out to the Taniaste that a pensioner living alone or a family pays almost two times more in terms of a unit of electricity than a data centre.
How can the Government justify when many data centres are part of the wealthiest corporations in the world, and their power demands are actually driving up the cost of electricity as well.
And now we have the proof as a new study commissioned by Friends of the Earth Ireland suggests that an estimated cumulative average of €360 has been added to household electricity bills in recent years due to high data centre energy demand.
The same report found that on our current trajectory, data centres will add €1.4bn to household electricity bills over the next number of years.
And then the Government has the cheek to urge the public to cut their electricity consumption at peak times while data centres go full blast using cut price power and use more of it than all the households in the country combined.
And it’s going to get worse unless data centres like the one planned for the old Premier factory are halted as at present Ireland has 10 times the average number of data centres per head of population compared to every other EU country except Germany.
Apart from the electricity, should the facility on the Boyne Road go ahead it will pump hundreds of thousands of litres of hot water – used to cool servers – into the river on a daily basis which is not good for the environment and aquatic life.
In the next few years it is projected these data centres will use between 26% and 30% of all electricity in Ireland compared to less than four percent in other countries.
Apart from the public being ripped off by subsidising these data centres they have the potential in the long term to cause massive job losses.
The irony is we are building data centres to generate power-hungry artificial intelligence which in turn is replacing the tech jobs – 20,300 lost in the sector in the first three months of this year.
It’s a case of turkeys voting for Christmas and the public is footing the bill to cook them. You couldn’t make it up.
River Glyde Fish Kill Demands Answers
THEY used to say summer hasn’t arrived in Ireland until the first fish kill is announced and the one that occurred on the River Glyde this week is one of the worst ever in Louth.
An estimated 20,000 fish including Atlantic salmon, eel, brown trout, pike, minnow, and coarse fish species were wiped out.
Last year up to 32,000 fish were killed in the River Blackwater in Co Cork yet no one could be found to be held responsible.
Isn’t it amazing how this country has strict air pollution rules to the extent that homes are being built without chimneys yet some of our rivers are highly polluted and used as dumps.
It is believed that the source of the pollution in the Glyde is known and it can only be hoped that those who caused this environmental destruction will face the full rigour of the law.
Louth Labour TD Ged Nash has called for authorities to “throw the book” at those who caused this disaster, many would say they should be thrown into the river they polluted as well.
So Much for the Staycation Summer
A FEW days of sun had a lot of people thinking about holidaying at home this year but there ain’t no talk about staycations this week.
The rain in recent days has been relentless and accompanied by winds that make it feel more like January than June and the forecast for the coming week is little better.
Yet Met Éireann’s climate statement for spring maintains that the last three months were the third-warmest on record in Ireland since 1900.
You’d often wonder if the forecasters are living in the same country as the rest of us as many homes have to turn the heating on some evenings in what is supposed to be summer.
Being caught in one of those mega showers in Dublin on Wednesday put all thoughts of holidaying here out of my head and it’ll be a Ryanair flight rather than a trip down his sodden sod this year.
