European Union countries are trying to pass their environmental measures

As COP28 opens in Dubai, Ireland is trying to tackle data centers while in Germany the Green Party, in government for two years, is going through a difficult time.

In Germany, however, the Greens were in a position to win the chancellery in 2021. They had become essential, driven by the theme of climate protection and garnering up to 28% of voting intentions, at their peak. But since their entry into government, relations with the liberals of the FDP, the third partner of the coalition and fierce defenders of budgetary austerity, have been particularly complicated and marked by frequent quarrels.

The Greens often appear as the party of prohibition, with an image of giving lessons. In opinion surveys, the party is only at 12%, its worst score in 5 years and among the 126,000 members, many criticize the leaders for their changing positions and their renunciations.

The Greens are therefore paying a high price for their participation in government whereas before being in power, they were the ones who were shaking things up. They are victims of the compromises to which they must resign themselves, particularly on decarbonization and the right to asylum. The party must also sometimes swallow snakes and accept the extension of nuclear power plants or the reopening of coal power plants.

Quarrels within the coalition

One man, in particular, crystallized the discontent: the vice-chancellor and Minister of the Economy, Robert Habeck. He is the permanent target of the far right and is accused of attacking individual freedoms in the name of the fight against global warming. Its certainly the most unpopular measure is the heating law, scheduled for January 2024. It requires new boilers to operate with at least 65% renewable energy. A project considered costly for households in a context of inflation and which the government’s number 2 had to review.

The government’s financial setbacks will not help the environmental party’s affairs, since the envelope of 60 billion euros, saved during the health crisis and which the coalition wanted to allocate to the ecological transition, was invalidated by the Constitutional Council. From now on, in each ministry, the teams go through expenses, item by item, in search of savings. This endangers several projects carried out by the Greens to protect the climate.

To get out of this bad situation, the Greens are calling for the suspension of the debt brake, namely the rule which limits the deficit to 0.35% of GDP each year. This would allow the coalition to find some air and finance projects, but here again, the Greens face categorical refusal from their FDP partners.

There are therefore two solutions left to find the missing money. The first would be to increase taxes. The second would be to reduce the resources dedicated to climate protection. The latter would definitely not suit the Greens, but it is the most likely.

Ireland, country of tech and digital giants

Data centers pose a new threat to the environment. These large data centers bring together servers, hard drives and other routers, absolutely necessary for the operation of Internet-related companies such as Google, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft, which have chosen to set up in Dublin thanks to more than attractive taxation. .

Thirty years ago, Ireland linked its destiny to these GAFAMs. For the past decade, announcements of new data center projects have been coming at a rapid pace. Enough to give the Irish Republic the title of leading European host of these data centers. Currently there are 82 in the country, and all but five of them are in the Dublin area.

“This is a lot relative to the size of Ireland and disproportionate to the populationexplains Barry McMullin, professor at the School of Electronic Engineering at the University of Dublin. Carbon dioxide emissions directly associated with data center energy consumption are very significant, he explains. Honestly, there is a conflict today between pursuing economic goals and simply meeting our global environmental obligations.”

When they are built, these data centers also obviously modify the landscape and have a direct impact on the fauna and flora. Then, huge amounts of water are used, to cool them, to prevent overheating. Finally, their energy consumption is gigantic, which could even lead to fears of power outages this winter, warns the Irish energy regulator.

Politicians call for a moratorium to be put in place

Brid Smith, a member of the far-left People Before Profit party, explains that “In most European countries, data centers cannot consume more than 4.5% of the national electricity network. In Ireland, it is 18%. When it went to 11% in Singapore, which is an economy quite similar to ours, they stopped at 11%. They said now, it’s too much, we can’t go any further, so no more data centers.”

If the Irish government refutes the idea of ​​a moratorium, it is still counting on a dispersion of data centers to relieve the pressure on the electricity network. In the coming years, future construction should therefore mainly see the light of day on the west coast of the country.