Ireland’s Central Statistics Office reported that data centres consumed 22 percent of the country’s total metered electricity in 2024, up from just 5 percent in 2015. In absolute terms, metered electricity used by data centres rose 10 percent year over year, from 6,335 gigawatt-hours in 2023 to 6,969 gigawatt-hours in 2024. The figure was published on June 10, 2025.
The number is notable because it comes from a national statistics agency reporting official metered data, not an estimate. It made Ireland a widely cited example of how concentrated data center growth can come to rival or exceed the electricity used by an entire category of a country’s households - the CSO noted urban households accounted for 18 percent and rural households 10 percent of metered consumption in the same year. The Irish grid operator’s concern over this trend had already led to restrictions on new data center connections in the Dublin region.