Billy MacInnes says grand plans for digital infrastructure spending are nice, but to what end?
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Image: Dennis
There’ a poem by Roger McGough, a member of the Liverpool poets from the 1960s, called The Leader. It’s very short. The first three lines are as follows:
I wanna be the leader
I wanna be the leader
Can I be the leader?
I found myself thinking of the poem after reading quite a few headlines along the lines of “X seeks to be a global leader in Y” or “A needs to invest to become a leader in B”.
Everyone wants to be a leader in something. Here in Ireland, for example, there are a number of voices calling for the country to develop and maintain a leadership in data centres in Europe. But being a leader has its own consequences, as reflected in a recent report in the Irish Examiner headlined: “Ireland forecast to spend €300 billion on infrastructure by 2050”.
According to the story, PwC has forecast annual infrastructure spending in Ireland will rise from €7.9 billion in 2024 to €13.7 billion by 2050, making Ireland the 14th largest infrastructure market in Europe by 2050. “The projected spending growth reflects Ireland’s well-publicised infrastructure deficit,” it reveals. “The investment over the next 25 years will be dominated by digital spending at €71.8 billion, mainly through data centres.”
Rob Costello, capital projects and infrastructure partner at PwC, told the newspaper: “Developing the digital infrastructure that will drive our economy forward will require significant investment in our energy infrastructure. New, sustainable communities will be made possible only through investment in transport, health and education.”
It’s intriguing that Costello should frame the significant investment required in Ireland’s energy infrastructure within the context of digital infrastructure development when the much bigger story is surely the need to reorder its energy infrastructure to accommodate the massive increase in renewable energy required to deliver on Ireland’s climate commitments. In that context, every data centre is an additional burden on those commitments and Ireland’s energy infrastructure.
It is emblematic of Ireland’s desire to be the ‘leader’ in data centre provision and digital infrastructure in the EU that it should attach more resources to funding the needs of that sector than to developing sustainable communities by investing in transport, health and education. The question that needs to be asked is what value does it bring to Ireland and its citizens that it should be elevated above the investment requirements for transport, health and education (not to mention the all-pervasive issue of housing)?
Examine the data
Let’s consider two simple questions: Firstly, how will building more data centres in Ireland (with their attendant disproportionate energy demands) benefit us if they are being hosted here to service users in the rest of the EU? Secondly, if there is any major local advantage to be gained from becoming the preferred location for data centres, why aren’t all the other EU countries insisting data centres providing services to their citizens should be hosted locally?
And while it sounds impressive to want to be a ‘leader’, it helps if you can articulate clearly where you’re leading people to. I’m not sure that many people in Ireland are looking at the current state of the nation and thinking, yes of course we need more houses, better public transport, improved health and education and cheaper, greener energy but they’ll have to wait because data centres have to be our top priority.
Why would they? As far as I’m aware, no political party ran for election promising to devote significantly more spending to digital infrastructure and power infrastructure than social spending, transport and water. It would be interesting to see how that might have been received on the doorstep if they had. I’m guessing the response would not have been positive.
And yet, if there is a value in Ireland becoming a ‘leader’ in hosting data centres, surely the political and technology leaders in Ireland should be able to tell their fellow citizens simply and clearly what it is. Huge sums are being invested on their behalf, so what’s the pay back on that investment? As Jerry Maguire famously said: “Show me the money.”
Surely, leading requires us to take full stock of the attendant risks and consequences, such as the huge share of Ireland’s electricity resources being diverted to meet the country’s data centre ambitions. Leading means assessing all the demands for investment and prioritising them in a way that meets the greatest needs of the country as a whole.
Sometimes, when it comes to technology in particular, it feels as if ‘leading’ or being ‘the leader’ doesn’t really mean anything more than being in front of everyone or everything else. Perhaps there is something to be gained in leading from the front and establishing a strong presence in the data centre sphere, but what is it exactly beyond the kudos of being a leader?
The last three lines of McGough’s poem are:
Yippee I’m the leader
I’m the leader
OK what shall we do?
There are 71.8 billion reasons why we should try and work out a clear and easy to understand answer to that question.