Bring Your Own Power, and 80 Per Cent Green: Ireland Sets the Price of a Grid Connection
After four years of de facto restriction, Ireland now has a formal route for new data centres to connect to the grid. On 12 December 2025 the Commission for Regulation of Utilities published its decision on a new electricity connection policy for data centres. The policy is not an open door. It sets demanding conditions on generation, renewable sourcing and location. But it replaces case-by-case uncertainty with a published set of rules, which is what investors had been asking for.
The decision comes against a backdrop that the Central Statistics Office has documented in detail. Data centres used 6,969 GWh of metered electricity in 2024, 22 per cent of the national total and up from 5 per cent in 2015. New data centres must provide generation or storage capacity, on site or close by, to match the maximum import capacity they request from the grid. The logic is that a data centre should not add to the amount of firm capacity the rest of the system must procure.
If it brings a matching amount of dispatchable plant, the system operator can call on that plant during tight periods, whether or not the data centre itself is drawing at full load. Data centres must meet at least 80 per cent of their annual demand with electricity from additional renewable projects generating in the Republic of Ireland. EirGrid and ESB Networks must consider whether a requested connection is in a constrained or unconstrained location on the network, looking at the specific application and its location rather than applying a broad regional approach.
In May 2026 EirGrid published version 3 of its Data Centre Connection Offer Process and Policy, which turns the decision into an application procedure. Put together, the conditions add up to a significant increase in the capital required for an Irish data centre. Ireland's approach is the most explicit European example of a principle now spreading in different forms: large new loads should bring their own capacity and their own clean energy.