Data centre electricity consumption up 10%, CSO says

The metered electricity consumption by data centres rose by 10% last year, now accounting for almost a quarter of all usage, according to latest figures.

The percentage share of total metered electricity consumption used by data centres rose to 23% in 2025, up from 5% in 2015.

The Central Statistics Office said metered electricity consumption by data centres rose from 6,973 gigawatt-hours (GWh) in 2024 to 7,663 GWh in 2025.

Consumption by all other users, including residential and other business customers, went up by 2% over the same period.

Dr Grzegorz Glaczynski, a statistician in the climate and energy division, said: “Data centre consumption has grown every single year without exception, more than doubling between 2015 and 2019 from 1,240 GWh to 2,490 GWh, and tripling again between 2019 and 2025, reaching 7,663 GWh.”

Data centres consumption is higher than urban households, which stands at 18%, and rural households who use 9%.

In January, the government launched a plan to “facilitate future investment in energy-intensive sectors”, including data centres which directly employ around 21,000 people in the country.

The Large Energy User Action Plan (Leap) aims to see the location of new businesses with large demands better planned so that they are constructed near renewable energy sources, but would not prevent them being built in other areas.

At the time, Energy Minister Darragh O’Brien said they are “central to Ireland’s economic and digital future as they are a key part of our foreign direct investment (FDI) and the associated employment”.

Releasing the data, the CSO said the data centres were “not readily identifiable” to them and had to work through 2.6 million meters to identify which Meter Point Reference Numbers (MPRNs) were potentially used by data centres.

They said they found by doing so that: “A small number of data centres accounted for most of the metered electricity consumption by data centres.”