Data centers could gobble up twice as much electricity by 2026 thanks in large part to cryptocurrencies and artificial intelligence, according to a new report from the International Energy Agency . We rely on data centers to store all our emails, photos, cat videos, and everything else floating around in the cloud. More and more, data centers are cropping up to mine Bitcoin and train AI.
Its 82 data centers already accounted for 17 percent of the country’s electricity consumption in 2022. Another 54 are either under construction or recently approved to start building. By 2026, all those data centers could be responsible for nearly a third of the country’s annual electricity demand. “The rapid expansion of the data centre sector and the elevated electricity demand can pose challenges for the electricity system,” the IEA report says. The risk isn’t unique to Ireland.