15/07/2026
Ireland's data centers are now consuming almost as much electricity as every home in the country combined.
New figures from Ireland's Central Statistics Office show that data centers used 7,663 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of electricity in 2025, accounting for 23% of the country's total electricity consumption.
By comparison, all residential homes — including urban and rural households — used 28%.
Just a decade ago, data centers accounted for only 5% of Ireland's electricity use. Since 2015, their share has grown by 360%, driven by the rapid expansion of cloud computing and, more recently, artificial intelligence.
Ireland has become one of Europe's largest data center hubs despite having a population of only about five million people. Around 89 data centers operate in the country, most clustered around the Greater Dublin Area and owned by companies including Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, Google, and Meta.
The surge in electricity demand has raised concerns about pressure on Ireland's power grid. In 2021, regulators effectively halted new grid connections for many data centers around Dublin because of fears that electricity demand could outpace available capacity.
Although that policy has since been replaced, new large data centers must now provide their own flexible on-site power generation and source at least 80% of their annual electricity from new renewable energy projects within six years.
The International Energy Agency previously projected that data centers could consume about one-third of Ireland's electricity by 2026. With data centers already accounting for 23% of the country's electricity use in 2025, that prediction remains within reach.
The figures highlight how the infrastructure powering cloud services and artificial intelligence is becoming one of the largest consumers of electricity in entire countries, fueling an ongoing debate over energy demand, grid capacity, and the future of digital infrastructure.
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"Ireland’s data centers consumed nearly as much electricity as every home in the country combined in 2025." Tom's Hardware