Rules allowing new data centres to use fossil fuels to generate a portion of their own electricity are facing a High Court challenge by three environmental groups.
Friends of the Irish Environment, Friends of the Earth Ireland and ClientEarth have applied for a judicial review of the rules which they claim breach Ireland’s climate targets and the underlying Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act.
The legal application, taken against the State’s energy regulator – the Commission for Regulation of Utilities – was lodged with the High Court on Tuesday.
It comes after the regulator last December lifted a de facto moratorium on new data centres which was introduced in areas where the electricity supply was under strain.
Data centres use huge amounts of electricity but the supply in Dublin and Meath, where most operators want to locate, only just keeps up with the existing demand from households and businesses.
The regulator’s new “large energy users connection policy” published in December stated new facilities using large amounts of electricity – primarily data centres – could be granted connection to the electricity grid so long as they supplied as much electricity as they used and 80 per cent of the electricity was sourced from renewable energy.
The move allows new data centres to set up by commissioning new wind and solar farms to match their needs.
These renewable projects do not need to connect directly to the data centres but must feed into the national electricity supply the same amount of power as the data centres use.
However, they only have to match 80 per cent of the electricity needs of the data centres while the remainder can come from on-site diesel and gas generators.
It is understood that this 20 per cent clause is at the core of the argument the environmental groups will be making.
ClientEarth lawyer Natascha Hospedales said it was too early in the proceedings to provide details of the case.
“Yes, we filed a case with Friends of the Earth Ireland and Friends of the Irish Environment yesterday, but we will not be commenting until the case is presented to the High Court, which we’re expecting to be early next week,” she said.
Electricity usage by data centres is extremely large, currently making up 22 per cent of national usage. This is due to rise to 30 per cent in the coming years even before any new data centres are granted permission.
Climate campaigners argue that allowing the sector to expand further means extra power from new wind and solar farms will be used by data centres instead of replacing existing gas-fired power stations.
This, they claim, would mean the decarbonisation of electricity would stall while the 20 per cent clause could result in an increase of fossil-fuel use.
The regulator said it was aware that an application for leave to bring judicial review proceedings against it has been filed in the High Court Central Office. “However, we have not yet received notice of any application or any further details.”
