The Green Party wants to see data centres, not households, pay for grid modernisation and expansion. Green Party Deputy Leader and party spokesperson on infrastructure and public expenditure, Cllr Hazel Chu, is calling for a levy on data centres to be introduced that would cover these costs, which are currently being paid by households. 

 

Chu says “Data centres are consuming a quarter of our electricity,  it is time they paid their fair share. Irish households should not be subsidising the massive energy consumption of tech giants. In the last five years, data centres added on average €360 to household bills and from October the CCPC says we’ll all have to pay €41.25 each year to pay for costs of building, maintaining, and upgrading Ireland's electricity infrastructure. If you consume enormous amounts of the country’s energy, you should make an appropriate contribution towards the cost.”

 

Cllr Chu said that the data centre tax would be on both on the use of electricity and gas saying:

 

“We are proposing an electricity consumption levy of €0.011/kWh on electricity consumed by data centres. Based on a similar system that was recently introduced in Virginia in July, this would raise approximately €84 million per year on current consumption, before accounting for future growth. And to go one step further than Virginia we are putting a levy on gas consumption too.

 

“Gas Networks Ireland data shows that large non-power users consumed almost 8.9 TWh of gas in 2025. Yet we don't even know how much of that gas is being consumed by data centres, that is simply unacceptable. The Commission for Regulation of Utilities is now warning that new very large industrial users, primarily data centres and electricity generators, could have a major impact on Ireland's gas security. If Ireland has to plan, reinforce and protect its energy infrastructure because of these enormous new demands, the companies creating that demand should pay towards it. That money would be ringfenced to pay for the improvements to the national grid that are necessary because of data centre expansion here. "

 

“The Government has created a national energy model that hoards grid capacity for data servers while families face rising network charges and inflated bills. All we’re asking is that these large energy users pay their share. We cannot keep socialising the costs and privatising the profits.”

Green Party Calls For 100m Tax on Fossil Fueled Data Centres