Host in Ireland, a strategic global initiative created to increase awareness of the benefits of hosting digital assets in Ireland, and winner of the Datacloud Europe 2016 award for Innovative Data Center Location, has released a new report, Ireland’s Data Hosting Industry 2017.
The research study, created in collaboration with Bitpower and partly-funded by the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI), examines the opportunities and challenges associated with the digital asset hosting industry in Ireland.
The report also attempts to establish a baseline of the size, by category and sustainability, of Ireland’s data center industry, addressing the scale of energy in use, requested and predicted over the period from 2017 to 2024. In 2016, the total energy use for all operational data centers in Ireland was estimated to be 1.40 TWh. Ireland’s total electricity use in 2016 was 27.6 TWh.
By way of illustration, the world’s data centers used 416.2 TWh in 2016, of which Ireland’s data centers energy use represented 0.34 percent of the industry total. By analyzing the different types of data centers, and documenting the energy efficiency and best practices in data center design and operations, the report will act as a useful reference for policymakers when looking to provide context to the growing global requirement for data centers, as a “connected planet” becomes a reality.
“Data has a much higher economic value than the energy that powers it, and all stakeholders should recognize this when trying to evaluate the sustainability of the data center industry in Ireland,” said David McAuley, founder and CEO, Bitpower, and Host in Ireland Advisory Council member. “As Ireland’s Data Hosting Industry 2017 report indicates, collaboration between data center operators, state utilities and agencies, and renewable energy developers will be key to maintaining Ireland’s position as a Tier 1 global location for hosting and participating in the next wave of growth.”
