Big Tech’s AI dream turns into Ireland’s energy nightmare – POLITICO

BRUSSELS — The growth of power-hungry artificial intelligence is redrawing the map of Europe’s data centers — and Ireland, the heart of the continent’s tech scene, may lose out.

When users stream a movie or check their email, they connect to data centers — the physical backbone of the digital world. These rows of server racks have become a pillar of the economy in Ireland, the European Union base for many tech companies.

According to a recent study by United States-based analyst Synergy Research Group, Dublin is the world’s third-largest hyperscale data center hub — and the top site in Europe. Hyperscalers are large cloud providers such as Amazon, Microsoft and Google that operate massive networks made up of thousands of data servers.