Data centers in Ireland accounted for more than 21 percent of total metered electricity consumption in 2023, up from five percent back in 2015.

Central Statistics Office (CSO) figures show that data centers consumed 20 percent more electricity in 2023 than the year before.

Last year, the CSO said that data centers consumed 31 percent more power in 2022 than in 2021 and accounted for 18 percent of all metered electricity used in Ireland.

Quarterly metered electricity consumption by data centers increased from 290 gigawatt hours in the first quarter of 2015 to 1,661GWh hours in the fourth quarter of 2023, a rise of some 473 percent.

Urban households accounted for 18 percent of total metered electricity consumption, while rural households made up 10 percent.

"We do want data centers but they have to live within the climate limits that we have and also the power and grid limits and that's something that the CRU (Commission for Regulation of Utilities) is coming out with their connection policy," Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications Eamon Ryan told RTE.

"That's what we can and will manage and do."

After a flurry of data center builds, the Dublin area is subject to a defacto moratorium on new data centers imposed by state-owned grid operator EirGrid, which has said it won't grant any new application requests until 2028.

Several operators have looked to get around this with on-site power generation or connections to the country’s gas network, while some upcoming sites were able to get grid connection promises before the moratorium.

Last month, Google announced plans for a third data center in Dublin, although it hasn't said if the project has existing grid connection authorization from local operator EirGrid. Amazon Web Services is also trying to build three new data centers in the Irish capital, after it was delayed by appeals.

Earlier this year, AWS was said to be restricting the amount of resources available at its existing data centers in Dublin amid concerns about power availability.