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Ireland’s datacentres overtake electricity use of all urban homes combined | The Guardian
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2024
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I have had this argument with my politically minded friends. These are not all that bad. Ireland has an ever increasing percentage of renewables, they provide a high standard of living for their employees and the demand exists regardless of where we put them.
Some moved to block these, and so they would exist somewhere else. The only difference would be that place might have less renewables and Ireland loses opportunity for high income positions.
I'm not saying what anything in your post is wrong. I would like to add, though, that there's a housing crisis in Ireland, and I know half a dozen tech workers that can't afford their own apartment. Just saying.
Absolutely there is, the housing crisis is a result of long term failures by government. While it may be exasperated by refugees and asylum seekers, the system should have allowed for this but it did not even allow for natural population growth.
There has been a 20 year under delivering of residential housing. The government has failed to stop large funds buying up large swathes of new developments to rent out or sit on.
There are very simple solutions that could be immediately implemented like banning Airbnb, banning, corporate residential ownership, increasing taxes on multiple homes and introducing a meaningful derelict/unused home tax.
The problem is the governments pensions funds are tied to the real estate market and the level of taxation on other forms of investment has left property as the main viable option.
Commercial zoning is different, not entirely unrelated but the datacentres are not competing with residential property developers.