Ireland has been cited as a “cautionary” tale in a UN report on the environmental impact of runaway artificial intelligence (AI) growth.
The report highlights the heavy demand data centres place on Ireland’s energy systems, with 21 per cent of all electricity here used for data processing.
That figure is forecast to grow to more than 30 per cent in the next few years as data centres expand to facilitate the huge processing capacity needed by AI, while proposed rules to let them provide their own electricity are expected to increase fossil-fuel use.
The report, Environmental Cost of AI’s Energy Use: Carbon, Water and Land Footprints, was compiled by the Institute for Water, Environment and Health, a UN academic body.
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“One of the most consequential dimensions of AI that remains comparatively underexamined is its environmental footprint and the justice implications that follow,” its authors wrote.
“Its expansion involves physical infrastructure and supply chains, including data centres, chips, electricity generation, cooling systems, water withdrawals, land occupation, critical minerals, and eventual e-waste.”
Expansion comes with “sobering” statistics, the report says. If data centres – the “physical backbone of AI” – were a country, they would be the 11th most energy-hungry in the world, similar to France.
AI workloads account for 20 per cent of data centre electricity use but that is expected to rise to 40 per cent by 2030, using enough power to supply 1.3 billion people in sub-Saharan Africa for five years.
“The associated land footprint of generating that electricity in 2030 would exceed 14,000 sq km, roughly the area of Northern Ireland,” it says.
“The estimated 9.3 trillion litres of water used by data centres would meet the drinking water needs of Earth’s 8.1 billion people for about 1.6 years.”
Ireland is described as “a live cautionary example” of energy demand running ahead of infrastructure, with data centres using electricity equivalent to all urban households combined.
“It’s a concrete, documented example of what happens when AI infrastructure growth outpaces energy planning – and a preview of what other countries are heading toward.”
Commenting on the report, Dr Nathan Quinlan of the School of Engineering at University of Galway, said electricity demand by data centres in Ireland was way out of proportion to global AI hubs such as the USA and China, where demand was 4 per cent and 1 per cent respectively.
“We already have a steep hill to climb to build an energy system that’s compatible with a liveable climate and a thriving society, and become independent of volatile fossil fuel supplies,” he said.
“Ireland needs strong and purposeful decisions around our approach to this resource-intensive, aggressively expanding new industry that can potentially undermine our local and global efforts to avert the worst outcomes in the climate crisis.”
