I was on BBC 1 Panorama last night talking about data centres. Here is a short clip of the segment on Ireland in the programme. Unfortunately RTÉ hasn't covered this issue so it's up to the BBC to actually expose the reality of data centres in Ireland.

The government is too busy pandering to massive corporations to do anything about this. We need a national moratorium on data centers now.

Where should we put the data centres then? Isn't the answer to a) make them more efficient and b) invest in renewables to power them? [I haven't seen the programme so perhaps these were raised?]

There's 2 problems. One is that they should be run by renewables and Ireland's power is not. Second is what type of data is stored and for what purpose. Lots of advertising and black data which is unnecessary

@EcoEye All the waste heat from #DataCentres can be used in #DistrictHeating to help decommission thousands of fossil fuel home heating systems and reduce our dependence on foreign fossil fuel imports! why is this never mentioned in these debates?

Thanks for highlighting this. Long, long overdue. The consequences of hosting these huge energy gobblers has been completely ignored in both ‘Climate Action Plans’ published by the present government.

Was talking with my son in law who is a coder & relies on data centres . He says it’s shocking & that data centres need to be located in much colder countries than ours . The amount of electricity used to power cooling fans is unsustainable

No joke. The Irish gov have deliberately hoodwinked the Irish public into bearing the cost of these data centres electricity over the last number of years. Caught, the Electric Co. now want to give every household 50 euro for the inconvenience.

You know that this tweet that you just made uses the cloud right?

Yes. Apart from the 7,890 articles RTE has produced on the subject it hasn't covered this issue at all.

Worth a read #DataCenters Also watch @Snowden #CitizenFOUR