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Irish datacenters now guzzle 23% of the country's electricity

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271–280 of 329 posts

Re: Irish datacenters now guzzle 23% of the country's electricity

#271
post #267

My electricity costs 34 cent per Kw/h and I can’t afford solar panels or a renovation to air to water heating while the government insists we shouldn’t use oil / coal anymore nor logs or turf to heat our homes edit: I live in Ireland

For people outside of Ireland: these rates are not the norm. They are usually around 20-22. Can go down 17 if on special plans, or even 12 if you have an electric car.

Actually as of July 1st it is now 38 cents. This is very much the norm

https://www.electricireland.ie/residential/news/detail/elect...

Re: Irish datacenters now guzzle 23% of the country's electricity

#272
post #219

Good work by them. An incredibly clean use of power with strong revenue. As industries go, this is a pretty good use of land and energy.

I would have agreed with that two years ago, to the extent that crypto isn't mined in DCs. But AI is mined in DCs, and looks a bit frothy. Is it delivering value to someone? yes; is it delivering value in the round? jury is still out.

Re: Irish datacenters now guzzle 23% of the country's electricity

#273
post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There IS value being created, or people wouldn't use the tools. But for who and where is it realized? Ireland’s massive data centers aren’t there to serve Ireland’s tiny population. The value is exported overseas and profits realized overseas. So what really matters for Ireland (and any country/region hosting these data centers) is whether the benefits in terms of capital spending + the few ongoing jobs created out…

Employees of construction companies, electricity companies and the data center, among others, all get paid, no?

They get paid a rounding-error amount, and only during the brief construction and setup phase, compared to the total amount of money the thing is making for its owners.

Re: Irish datacenters now guzzle 23% of the country's electricity

#275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why should Ireland undermine 13% of it's GDP Undercutting other countries on tax policy tends to piss them off. So it comes down to whether the benefits of the policy outweigh the blowback. The 13% of GDP figure can be a bit misleading as GDP from being a tax haven tends to help the average irish citizen a lot less than more traditional ecconomic activity.

eh, other countries can improve their offering. It's a good thing. We punish companies when they collude to keep salaries low. So too should countries compete with attractive tax packages.

> We punish companies when they collude to keep salaries low

No we fucking don't. I have no idea how you reached that position in the uber era.

Re: Irish datacenters now guzzle 23% of the country's electricity

#276
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody hosts datacenters in Ireland because of capacity reasons. It's not a good location for power, people or connectivity. They host them there for tax reasons. You can bet your firstborn these datacenters are only the exact size that is the minimum allowed by tax law, not a square millimeter more. Yes, datacenters are critical internet infrastructure. But in Ireland they're more like a sailing ship with the sails…

https://enterprise.gov.ie/en/publications/publication-files/... > it is estimated that in 2024, of the order of ~€104bn in annual GVA, 876,000 jobs and €14.6bn in annual employment related tax was enabled by the availability of digital infrastructure provided by data centres located in Ireland. Seems like the economics of hosting these data centers benefits Ireland substantially, even with their tax breaks.

Yes, at the cost of removing at least double, and for FANG companies about triple, the tax revenue from other EU governments. And that's just counting company tax (and only specific companies, ie. this is why the "billionnaire tax" is so low, well, this is the EU component of it)

(technically: FANG taxes in Ireland, in violation of OECD treaties, is 12.5%, and for other very large companies 15%. If your company is not at least a certain size, and you haven't transferred "company IP" into Ireland during a certain window that's now closed, other taxes that don't increase with revenue will raise effective tax to as high as 55% for sole traders. And the actual FANG income is mostly generated in France and Germany, who have 25% and 30% company tax rates respectively, with some other EU countries higher still. In other words, this is the tax system billionnaires salivate about: it's a regressive tax, specifically designed to make the ultra rich richer, and push everyone else's wealth down hard, even people outside of Ireland)

PLUS the income tax lost for both other EU countries and employees, because for most FANG employees, this is also a tax increase (assuming they chose to move to Ireland rather than stay in the Netherlands or elsewhere in the EU)

I mean we should unite against this! This system is making literally everyone in the EU poorer compared to the US tech sector. From an unemployed Romanian in a long term care facility to a French billionnaire. All are losing money through this system.

Re: Irish datacenters now guzzle 23% of the country's electricity

#277
post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

eh, other countries can improve their offering. It's a good thing. We punish companies when they collude to keep salaries low. So too should countries compete with attractive tax packages.

> We punish companies when they collude to keep salaries low No we fucking don't. I have no idea how you reached that position in the uber era.

https://www.justice.gov/atr/usdoj-antitrust-division-us-v-ad...

Re: Irish datacenters now guzzle 23% of the country's electricity

#278

Electricity exists to be used, and we have essentially infinite free energy from nuclear power. Why are we wringing our hands pretending like we're going to run out of electrons? The days of hauling and burning ancient organic material to generate power should be over, and all these guilt-based arguments fallaciously require you to accept that as a premise.

Quite right. I built my sodium reactor while the subsidies were in effect and only paid €4000. It's almost paid off already, and as a nice bonus, i get spent control rods, which attract wildlife.

Re: Irish datacenters now guzzle 23% of the country's electricity

#279
post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This might just be my bubble, but us there that much AI being used for girlfriends/scams, or even reels these days? Most people I know use it as a tool to do things for them, technical or otherwise. Even the loneliest people I know don't want to talk to a clanker unless there's at least a pretense of work being done.

> This might just be my bubble, but us there that much AI being used for girlfriends/scams, or even reels these days? How would you react if you got a panicked call from your spouse and it came from their phone number? To answer your question, it's a series of different but huge problems. https://www.iansresearch.com/resources/all-blogs/post/securi... https://www.rfi.fr/en/international-news/20260603-20-minutes... ht…

>How would you react if you got a panicked call from your spouse and it came from their phone number?

I would be surprised if an AI successfully imitated the batshit insane way my wife and I speak to one another, but I get how that could work for, say, a grandparent or aunty.

>There's also a whole industry of basically "virtual onlyfans" models that generate a TON of content and ad impressions on everything from Instagram, X, TikTok, even Twitch.tv

Are there stats on this? Like if you look at the top hundred influencers on these platforms, how many of them are AI? Is it a long tail?

Like you do hear a lot of stories about this kind of thing happening, but I haven't ever seen a figure that says something like "$x million lost to AI scams" the way you do with romance scams or crypto.

Re: Irish datacenters now guzzle 23% of the country's electricity

#280

Just to be contrarian: what we're talking about is "electricity use from economic activity". This should be good for Ireland but they'll need to build energy capacity to keep up. It's misplaced to be angry about datacenters themselves. There IS value being created, or people wouldn't use the tools. Construction creates jobs, manufacturing the machines in the buildings is a huge global industry; the value people gain…

Spot on @cadamsdotcom If you don’t want your landscape vandalised with windmills and powerlines, go nuclear. Especially where the weather is consistently miserable, not conducive to solar power.

Now where did I hear them called "windmills" again, maybe it was related to golf courses...
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