The Green Party has welcomed the decision to refuse planning permission for a large scale data centre technology park in Waterford.
Green Party Leader, Roderic O’Gorman, said that during a recent visit to Waterford, many people expressed concern at the scale of the development at Kilmeaden and the effect that it would have on local environment and infrastructure:
“The people of Kilmeaden were rightly concerned about the scale of this development. Not only would it have changed that village significantly in terms of size, it would have done untold damage to the local environment.
We are seeing that data centres across the country are causing environmental issues through their use of fossil fueled energy and pressure on the national grid, noise pollution, and water use. The Green Party in government set a moratorium on data centres that could not be powered by clean energy, and this development included provision for significant gas fired energy generation.
The current government has lifted that moratorium and we’re seeing now that the cost of that is not just on the environment, but also on people’s pockets as households pay for data centre energy use in their energy bills.
This decision, and a recent refusal for a data centre in Killala in Mayo, shows that the concerns that people have over the damage caused by data centres is real. The Green Party is calling on Government to reintroduce the moratorium until they can be built without damaging people’s pockets or the environment”.
