Can data centres provide a sustainable vehicle for change?

In Ireland, the national conversation surrounding data centres and their energy usage has shown little sign of abating. Yet recently it has changed in dynamic, with the Industrial Development Authority (IDA) expressing concern that data centres were being ‘scapegoated’ for the crisis in energy supply.

Critics of the industry, however, have continued to cite all too familiar statistics surrounding the growth of data centres in Ireland, and today there are 70 in operation, with 8 under construction, 5 in planning and a further 36 with planning approved.

These facilities are predicted to consume 11% of Ireland’s electricity supply and account for 1.85% of carbon emissions nationally.

The concern from local stakeholders is that with more data centres being connected to the national grid, particularly within the greater Dublin area, blackouts will affect other key consumers due to a constrained power supply.

These fears have been so widely expressed that it has led to an Oireachtas motion to implement a moratorium on new data centres, calling for stricter measures to be put in place.

Context, as ever, is crucial, and according to a blog from the International Energy Agency (IEA), forecasted electricity demands show that other users are consuming greater volumes of energy than data centres.

For example, by 2022 residential consumers are expected to use 9.5TWh, commercial consumers 9TWh, industrial organisations 8.6TWh with a further 7.5TWh for data centres and other large energy users (LEU) combined.

With regard to the carbon emissions of the industry, data centres emit an anticipated 1.85% of greenhouse gasses (GHG) in Ireland, compared to 37% for agriculture, 17% for transport, and 12% each for manufacturing/industry and residential.

An academic study also found that despite a 6-fold increase in the data being processed since 2010, data centre energy consumption globally had only risen by 6%.

Furthermore, IEA reports that although global data centre workloads will increase sharply, potentially tripling by 2020, further efficiency gains mean electricity demand may only rise by 3%.

These figures clearly illustrate that data centres are not excessive in demand, but are also far from profligate in consumption. Why, then, are data centres singled out for vilification in the energy debate?

Changing the perception

According to the IDA, the ICT industry, of which data centres are the beating heart, employs over 37,000 people and generates €35 billion in exports annually. Yet one of the key challenges is the failure to recognise their contribution to the economy and wider society.

One might argue that it is hard, even for the technology sector, to properly quantify the true value of data centres, but they are critical to all global economies and have been pivotal to the remote work and digital transformation efforts of the pandemic.

Within a traditional factory, it is easy to see the value: people go in and goods come out. Even within a service industry, a business has a premises, where people go in and services are provided.

It is all visible, and intuitive. Yet with data centres, the entire operation is disaggregated and digitised, and difficult to see the value.

A small, multi-tenant facility could be viewed like a modern business park, where the data centre provides hosting, power, connectivity, jobs and support services to enable small businesses to operate or trade online.

Whereas a large colocation or hyperscale facility will provide an on-ramp to the digital economy, directly enabling enterprise businesses via low latency connectivity, high levels of security, application resilience and capacity to scale or meet growing customer demands.

Driving innovation

With the broad drive toward greater digitisation of public services, Net Zero carbon targets and national development programmes for AI, Blockchain, and Quantum Computing, an advanced digital infrastructure is fundamental.

Here, Ireland is ahead of the curve with an infrastructure present that could position it as a world leader in digital infrastructure and renewable energy.

An excellent example of this lies between the Met Office and the Irish Centre for High End Computing (ICHEC) who have upgraded their infrastructure systems to provide earlier detection and warnings for severe weather events.

This HPC system not only provides greater insight for those reliant on accurate weather models but has allowed new business models to emerge, as the high resolution images and data can be made available on a commercial basis.

None of this would have been possible without a secure digital infrastructure, including low latency connectivity, supercomputing capacity, data centre processing and storage, as well as the knowledge and skills base as a result of the longstanding and close collaboration between academia and industry.

The reality is, however, that the expansion of Ireland’s data centre sector reflects local, regional and global demand for digital services.

So to have a moratorium on data centre connections, or even a restrictive approach, would be to stifle a key layer of infrastructure for the developing digital economy.

While a moratorium now looks unlikely, EirGrid has confirmed that it will not connect new data centres in greater Dublin until 2028 and that cases will be assessed on an individual basis.

With data centres classed as strategic infrastructure, however, it is essential that operators find a way to collaborate with local stakeholders and contribute to their economic and sustainability efforts.

Renewable ambitions

Another concern is that the sector’s energy demands will impact the country’s renewable energy source (RES) efforts and its decarbonisation goals.

Data centre operators, however, have always been at the cutting edge of energy management, especially in terms of efficiency, visibility and the integration of renewables.

Power Purchase Agreements, for example, have been crucial to the industry for decades, but now microgrid technologies have emerged, accelerating the development of smart grids that will support the generation of renewable capacity and the country’s sustainability goals.

The self-sufficiency of a microgrid means it can provide balanced and strategic infrastructure for a RES-dominated grid, storing electricity when necessary, feeding back when required, or being entirely self-sufficient for constrained periods.

This mode of operation, while a next logical step for data centres, also paves the way for other energy-intensive industries, such as the industrial manufacturing sector and pharmaceuticals, who may have underdeveloped or legacy power systems.

It is therefore likely that microgrids will be vital to national efforts, with Ireland increasing its RES generation targets from 70% to 80% by 2030.

Further, microgrids will also meet the connection requirements as set out by the Commission for the Regulation of Utilities (CRU), where assessment criteria specified not just the ability to modify or reduce demand, but also to have onsite generation or storage ‘equivalent to or greater than their demand’.

A vision for the future

Looking forward, Ireland needs not only to increase energy capacity, especially as it moves away from fossil fuels but to modernise its grid.

Data centre operators have already been instrumental in developing and promoting RES, as evidenced by the work of Amazon’s wind farms, in Cork and Donegal.

At Schneider Electric, we believe that data centres will play a key role in Ireland’s Net Zero future – using innovative approaches to design and build to underpin the country’s sustainability ambitions and build greater resilience into the grid.

We believe that our vision of truly sustainable data centres, and of Electricity 4.0 can help Ireland decarbonise its digital economy.

By working together, we can unite key stakeholders across the industry, including the CRU, national grid operators such as EirGrid, and data centre operators to deliver a green future for the country.

Only through a collaborative, integrated and measurable approach can Ireland realise its data centre, renewable, and sustainability ambitions. And through Electricity 4.0, it can become the world leader in integrating data centres with the grid.

Written by Marc Garner, VP, Secure Power Division, Schneider Electric UK and Ireland