Committee warns data centre private grid plans could deny renewables to households

PLANS TO ALLOW for the private development of electricity wires should include more safeguards than currently exist, the Oireachtas climate committee has recommended. 

The proposed law would allow private electricity grids to be created linking specific generators with specific users.

Members of the Oireachtas climate committee are concerned that the legislation is being developed “primarily for large energy users” and will “optimise the delivery of renewable energy to data centres”.

“This will also deny the provision of such energy to households and wider society,” the report states.

The report sets out committee members’ concerns that if all renewable generators are not connected to the national grid, this electricity is “effectively being prioritised for large energy users”.

“A data centre, for example, could use the same amount of electricity as 250,000 homes,” the report states.

Some members raised further concerns that private wires could facilitate additional energy demand, particularly from data centres.

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‘Pause the bill’

One of the committee’s 47 recommendations is that the bill should include “safeguards against the diversion of scarce renewables capacity away from uses that are in the public interest”.

This should be done to ensure that private wires arrangements “do not allow better capitalised actors to secure clean generation in a way that weakens decarbonisation progress elsewhere”, the committee recommended.

Friends of the Earth Ireland has called on the government to pause the bill in response to the committee’s recommendations.

Rosi Leonard, data centres campaigner with the NGO, said the report indicated the private wires bill was “full of contradictions” and posed risks to bill-payers and the public interest.

“This bill could open up the energy network in Ireland to privatisation, and the cost of doing this should not be taken likely by any in government,” Leonard said.

Where are Ireland's data centres?

The committee called on the government to justify why its proposed legislation is needed.

It called for climate protections to be built into the law, including that private wires proposals should require climate impact assessments, and provision in the law to prevent private wires from connecting to fossil fuel plants.

“The Committee recommends that private wires be permitted only within a framework that is demonstrably climate-aligned, renewables-focused, fair in cost allocation, protective of scarce grid capacity, and subject to early review,” the report stated.

“The central policy test should not be whether a private wire is technically possible, but whether it advances the public interest in a secure, affordable [way] and genuinely contributes towards decarbonisation.”

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'Potentially challenging situation' in meeting Ireland's electricity demand

The potential cost implications of private wires also need to be considered, the committee said.

Private wires should not be licensed until the energy regulator has published an assessment of the expected impacts on electricity tariffs for domestic and non-domestic customers, the financing of the national grid and the overall operation of the grid, it recommended.

Electric cars

On a much smaller scale, the bill would also allow for small-scale private cables, so people with no driveways can charge their electric cars on the street.

Soaring petrol and diesel prices have seen purchases of electric cars surge, with sales of new fully electric cars up by 50% year and year in March and by 100% in April.

The committee recommended that licences should not be required to build small-scale private wires in the case of street electric-vehicle charging.

Members of the committee believe local authorities are best placed to grant authorisation for private wires for car charging, rather than involving the energy regulator.

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