Ireland has two records that now interact. Its data centres use a larger share of national electricity than in any other European country. And its power prices are among the most exposed in Europe to the price of imported gas. The war that closed the Strait of Hormuz at the end of February has brought those facts together.
On 22 September 2026, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) reported that wholesale electricity prices in August were 76.9 per cent higher than in August 2025, and 9.6 per cent higher than in July. In July, wholesale prices had been 56.2 per cent above the previous year. Electricity recorded the biggest annual increase in the CSO's basket of wholesale energy products.
Data centres keep growing
Two months earlier, on 7 July, the CSO published its data centre consumption figures for 2025. Metered electricity consumption by data centres rose by 10 per cent, from 6,973 GWh in 2024 to 7,663 GWh in 2025. Consumption by all other users, including households and other businesses, rose by 2 per cent. Data centres accounted for 23 per cent of total metered electricity consumption in 2025, up from 22 per cent in 2024 and 5 per cent in 2015.
The CSO noted that data centre consumption "has grown every single year without exception," more than doubling between 2015 and 2019 and tripling again between 2019 and 2025. In the fourth quarter of 2025 alone, data centres used 1,991 GWh, compared with 291 GWh in the first quarter of 2015. Urban households accounted for 18 per cent of metered consumption in 2025 and rural households for 9 per cent. Large energy users, a category that includes significant data centres, accounted for 33 per cent.
Why gas sets the price
Natural gas generates about half the electricity used in Ireland, The Irish Times reported in April. "Ireland is one of the countries most reliant on natural gas for power generation in Europe," an economist told the paper in September. "So we have a more significant impact here than in most European countries."
Gas plants are usually the marginal generator in the all-island market, so their fuel cost sets the wholesale price in many hours. Wind output pushes prices down when it is available. In March, wholesale prices reached €179.10 per MWh on days of high dependence on fossil plants and fell to €94 when wind was strongest, according to The Irish Times.
Ireland buys its gas mainly through the British market, and British prices moved sharply after the Strait closed. The day-ahead gas price averaged 81 cent a therm in December 2025 and almost doubled to 151 cent in March 2026. Forward gas for the next twelve months rose from 77 cent a therm in December to 147 cent in March, a 90 per cent increase.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) says Europe's TTF benchmark averaged near USD 16 per million British thermal units in the second quarter of 2026, up 32 per cent year on year. Just over 10 per cent of the LNG exported through Hormuz in 2025 went to Europe, but because LNG is traded globally, the loss of Gulf supply raised prices everywhere. The spread between Asian and European prices flipped in Asia's favour after March, pulling flexible cargoes away from Europe.
What data centres pay
Large data centres in Ireland buy electricity through supply contracts and power purchase agreements, so they do not see the wholesale price directly in every hour. But those contracts reset, and new contracts signed this year reflect much higher forward prices. Because data centres consume at a high, flat rate, they cannot shift demand toward windy hours the way some flexible users can, which leaves them more exposed to the gas-set price that dominates low-wind periods.
Households are seeing a slower rise. The CSO's consumer price index showed domestic electricity prices up 8.1 per cent in the year to August. The average Irish family already pays about €1,700 a year for electricity, according to a report by the Economic and Social Research Institute cited by The Irish Times. Industry figures warned in April that prices would remain elevated even if peace returned quickly, because of physical damage to Qatar's LNG facilities and Europe's need to refill gas storage. "You not only have supply disruption, you also have supply destruction," one observer said.
The policy link
The Commission for Regulation of Utilities (CRU) published its decision on a new connection policy for data centres and other large energy users in December 2025. The policy requires new data centres to provide dispatchable generation or storage, on site or nearby, to match the maximum import capacity they request, and to source 80 per cent of their annual consumption from additional renewable generation in Ireland. That dispatchable capacity must take part in the wholesale market, so that it contributes to overall system adequacy rather than sitting idle as private backup.
The Hormuz crisis gives that policy a different weight. On-site generation in Ireland would mostly mean gas engines or turbines, adding to gas demand. Renewable matching, if it brings new wind and solar onto the system, reduces the hours in which gas sets the price, which helps every consumer. Battery storage helps shift wind output into the evening peak.
The political arithmetic
The combination of a 23 per cent demand share and a 77 per cent wholesale price increase will sharpen the debate over who should bear the cost of Ireland's data centre growth. Data centres argue that they pay full commercial rates and bring investment and jobs. Critics argue that their demand pushes up the system's reliance on gas at the margin and therefore the price for everyone.
What the crisis has made clear is that Ireland's exposure is structural. Wholesale prices remain 56 per cent below the August 2022 peak, the CSO said, and the European Central Bank has noted that this shock is smaller than the 2021 to 2022 crisis. But as long as gas sets the price in most hours, Ireland's data centre sector will carry the Gulf's risks into its electricity costs, and so will everyone else on the island's grid.