IE-NARR Workshop: “Tallagh: data centres and the energy transition”
Dr Sarah Anne Dunne
04.06.2025. The Irish Energy Narratives in Transition (IE-NARR) project, co-led by Centre member Patrick Brodie and colleagues Treasa de Loughry and Tomas Buitendijk have recently released their takeaways from a locally hosted workshop in Tallagh Co. Dublin. This blog, “Tallagh: data centres and the energy transition,” highlights the energy demands of large-scale digitalisation via data centres and big tech within the urban Irish context:
“[P]laces like Tallaght, Co. Dublin – which hosts several Amazon Web Services (AWS) data centres – are becoming locations of intensive energy politics and development. In 2023, data centres utilised (opens in a new window)21% of Ireland’s electricity, and (opens in a new window)50% in County Dublin alone. Compared to the European average of 1-3%, this is an incredibly high percentage. In this context, data centres – primarily built and developed by big tech, cloud “hyperscalers” like AWS, Google, and Microsoft – are becoming central actors in Ireland’s energy transition strategies.”
Brodie and his colleagues work queried the community concerns and pressures which emerge in localities sucgh as Tallagh, specifically with continued expansion and developments occuring.
“What are the place-based concerns of working class communities like those in Tallaght being subject to such significant data centre developments and expansion? What are the implications for housing, the environment, gender, Travellers’ rights, social infrastructure, and other localised issues? How do communities consider, and fight for, energy justice amidst these challenges?”
The workshop encouraged local involvement with four tables covering topics including “Policy,” “Infrastructure,” and “Heritage”- as well as an “open” table for addition, related discussion – with each table offering a printed Ordnance Survey map of Tallagh that was used “to create living layers onto the static official map representation of Tallaght, capturing local knowledge that conditions community perceptions of the energy transition”. Participants at the “Policy” table queried particularly the importance of digital policy and energy policy, questioning govnerment interventions and the priority of large scale companies compared to local communities and citizens. Additional concerns raised the opaque nature of data centres, where a lack of transparency in relation to data storage, energy consumption and development remains contentious.
“It was highlighted that the Government’s target for offshore wind energy production alone is 37GW by 2050, which far exceeds current national peak demand – and this has been tied to Ireland’s potential to “add value” to electricity by adding further data centre capacity. However, the question remains whether this is a desirable policy target; or whether the government should aim for certain limits to energy and digital growth instead.”
The “Infrastructure” table highlighted areas where infrastructure growth and development had stalled or was incomplete in the area, while recognising the centralisation of the Amazon Web Services campus, and querying the logics surrounding infrastructrual planning and decision making. Folllowing this line of though, “Cultural Heritage” participants discussed the development of infrastruture which focused on car travel – rather than public or pedestrian – as a cause of alienation and displacement in the area:
“The contemporary shape of the area – grid-like , with the “centre” containing large industrial parks, showrooms, data centres, a major hospital, and the Square shopping centre (rather than parks, playgrounds, playing fields, community centres, local services, etc.) – is, aside from being very energy intensive, discouraging of pedestrians, and unwelcoming to anyone who doesn’t work or consume in the area. “
Looking forward, IE-NARR will display the maps at a local venue in Tallagh, to be stored in the long term at UCD, Belfield; a self-guided 30-minute tour of Clondalkin which brings together “cultural and spatial heritage, ecolongical and infrastructural change, and the affective dimensions of scale at the heart of the changes affecting this part of Dublin” is also highlighted.
The next workshop is planned for Autumn 2025 to take place in Clifden Connemara, with further details to come.