Lisa Ryan

Good morning, David.

How are you?

Well, I suppose for starters, it should be said it's understandable why data centres came here in the first place.

You know, we have a very moderate climate, which apparently is extremely good for data centres.

It means they don't need to be heated, cooled.

They can kind of be kept at a steady temperature.

We have lots of data, sorry, technology companies, which are the main users of data centres.

They provide jobs.

So, you know, this is why they initially came here.

This report is now pointing out, along with other reports, it has to be said, but this is probably the first international one that is naming us, is pointing out that it's grown to such a large extent that now we do have some challenges facing us because of this.

the size of this data centre grows.

Yeah, that is the challenge.

It's expected to grow to 30% by already 2030.

And I suppose one of the big challenges that we have with data centres is that we are trying to switch our electricity system to a wholly renewables-based one.

So right now, our electricity system is based on wind mainly and then some gas when we don't have wind.

So what we need is very flexible demand to facilitate that kind of renewable electricity system.

So what you want is, and we're working a lot, you know, with households, we're trying to encourage people to be more flexible, not to use electricity when there's less wind, use more when there is wind.

And unfortunately, data centre electricity use isn't that kind of use.

It's very base, steady.

So it just kind of has an increase in our electricity demand over the whole period of the day, including, unfortunately, when the peak period when we really have struggled to match our electricity demand.