Data centers' share of national electricity consumption

Ireland's Central Statistics Office (CSO) found in 2024 that data centers consumed 21% of the country's metered electricity in 2023, more than all urban homes combined. This metric sets the electricity consumed by a territory's data centers against that territory's total metered consumption. It has become the sector's central political number because it makes visible in one figure what individual projects conceal: each site looks marginal, the aggregate does not. Reading it calls for two cautions. It covers metered consumption rather than dedicated generation, so behind-the-meter supply falls outside it and understates the published figure. And it sets rapid growth against national consumption that is often flat or declining, which raises the share even without new construction, an arithmetic effect regularly mistaken in debate for acceleration. For insurance, the number measures no peril directly, but it governs everything that follows, moratoria, connection terms, local taxation and project acceptance, which is to say most of the regulatory risk attaching to an asset amortized over more than twenty years.