Datacentres and Sustainability

A report by Host in Ireland has highlighted the vital role that Datacentres are playing in Ireland’s bid to reduce its carbon footprint as well as providing employment in a key growth industry. At present, there are 53 active data centres in Ireland, with eight under construction and a further 26 in the planning stages. Taking all this into account, it is expected that data centres will generate over €4.5 billion of inward investment by the year 2025. Dublin South West remains the largest cluster of data centres in Ireland with 14 active data centres.

This level of investment will see a boost in jobs in the data centre sector. As report previously, Sligo IT have reacted to the growth and demands placed on the Irish workforce from the data centre industry by creating the first engineering degree course targeted to the sector with the two-year BEng in Data Centre Facilities management. Annual Investment in data centres has reached €1.3bn on an annual basis

This level of growth was sparked in 2014 by an industry-led programme promoting Ireland as a key location and hub for data hosting for the global and EU market. One notable development in 2019 was the marked increase in direct investment in renewable energy from the data sector. With a view towards sustainability, Amazon has recently announced its investment in wind farms in Cork and Donegal.

Garry Connolly, president of Host in Ireland, said: “What is most encouraging is that this year we have seen several large-scale investments in the renewable energy sector from leading data centre operators. We expect these non-subsidised investments to continue. We have not seen any detrimental effects on investment from our projections two years ago despite uncertainty around Brexit. In fact, from our original projections they have risen by €1billion for 2021.”