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Time to seriously question the welcome mat for AI/Data centres 

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Following my look at the impact of data centres on the water supply for the Greater Dublin Area and the proposal to take water from the Shannon to meet demand, a number of other interesting statistics have come to me.

The figure of potential annual data centre use of 89.6 billion litres of water – with some estimates that data centres in GDA will use twice the domestic water supply – has been described by AI (ironically) as “a speculative high-end projection for a much larger future fleet of centres”.  And that it “assumes 136 data centres all operating at high water-use levels”. 

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Dr Matt Treacy
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Author and Commentator. Matt has published a number of books including histories of the republican movement and of the Communist Party of Ireland. He is currently working on a number of other books; his latest one is a novel entitled Houses of Pain. It is based on real events in the Dublin underworld. Houses of Pain is published by MTP and is currently available on line as paperback and kindle while book shops remain closed.
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