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South Dublin County Council cited grid issues and the lack of on-site renewable energy as reasons for the refusal.
Google’s plan to build a new data centre in Grange Castle has been thwarted by South Dublin County Council because of electricity grid and energy issues.
Alphabet-owned Google first revealed plans to expand its Grange Castle Business Park site – which is home to other data centres, including Microsoft – with a new data centre in June. The 72,400 sq m data storage facility would be built alongside two existing data centres.
“We have issued the formal notice that we will be submitting a planning application to expand our existing data centre in Ireland,” a spokesperson said at the time. “This application reflects our ongoing commitment to meeting the growing demand for our services and supporting Ireland’s digital economy.”
However, the council has now refused its planning application citing what it called “the existing insufficient capacity in the electricity network (grid) and the lack of significant on-site renewable energy to power the data centre”.
Google, which has its European headquarters in Dublin and employs more than 5,000 people in Ireland as of April, had said the data storage facility would include data halls, offices and staff facilities, along with a new thoroughfare connecting Grange Castle Business Park South with Profile Park Road.
The tech giant recently appointed Waterford-born Vanessa Hartley as the new head of its Irish operations after predecessor Adaire Fox-Martin left to become CEO and president of Equinix.
Pressure on the grid
A surge in the construction of data centres across the country is putting pressure on the national grid – with data centres now consuming more than a fifth of Ireland’s electricity.
As of last summer, the Republic of Ireland – a country with a population of approximately 5.2m people – was home to 82 operational data centres, with an additional 14 under construction and 40 with planning approved. Demand for data centres has surged in recent years in line with the global AI race to build the most advanced large language models (LLMs).
Some of the Big Tech companies building data centres in Ireland include TikTok, with one of its two Dublin-based Project Clover sites operational, and Amazon, which secured planning permission to build three new data centres in Dublin last September.
Last month, Google revealed that its carbon emissions have grown by nearly 50pc compared to 2019 levels, attributing this increase to a rise in energy consumed by its data centres and supply chain emissions amid the global AI boom. The company’s data centre electricity consumption grew by 17pc last year. However, the company also claimed that its data centres maintained a “100pc global renewable energy match”.
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