Irish datacenters consumed 23% of the country's metered electricity in 2025, a 10% increase from 2024, according to the Central Statistics Office.

Datacenter electricity use rose to 7,663 gigawatt hours in 2025, up from 6,973 gigawatt hours in 2024.

All other customers increased their consumption by only 2% over the same period.

The share of electricity used by datacenters has grown from 5% in 2015 to 23% in 2025, more than doubling between 2015 and 2019 and tripling again between 2019 and 2025, said Grzegorz Głaczyński, a statistician in the CSO's Climate and Energy Division.

Datacenters used more electricity than urban households, which accounted for 18% of metered use, and more than twice the rural household share of 9%.

The Commission for Regulation of Utilities imposed an effective moratorium on new grid connections for datacenters in the Dublin area in 2024, and the restriction remained in place for most of 2025.

The moratorium was lifted in December 2024, but electricity consumption still rose by 10% while the restriction was in effect.

New regulations require operators seeking connections above 10 megawatts to provide generators or battery storage and to feed power back to the grid when required, a practice already used by Microsoft and Digital Realty.

More than 80 datacenters operate in Ireland, a country of just over 5 million people, and public protests have emerged in response to the growing energy demand.

Similar concerns have been raised in the United States, where the Trump administration has asked technology firms to limit increases in energy bills and water usage associated with datacenter expansion.

The trend underscores the rising energy needs of data infrastructure and may influence future regulatory and grid planning in Ireland.