FACEBOOK IS INTENDING to construct a EUR200m data centre in Ireland that will likely be powered mainly by energy that is renewable.
If planning permission is allowed, the data centre is going to be the second in Europe of Facebook, and fifth world-wide, bringing the business ‘s Irish staff amounts up to over 1,000 with 40 new full time occupations.
Facebook plans to power the facility only through “sustainable” energy, most likely wind.
“Ireland has been a house for Facebook since 2007 and now’s planning program demonstrates our continuing interest to put money into Ireland,” said Rachel Peterson, data centre manager at Facebook.
“We expect to build an advanced, environmentally friendly data centre which will help us continue to associate individuals in Ireland and across the world while supporting local job development and Ireland’s successful technology market.”
Today the site plan will go to Meath County Council. Stage one will find the development spread over two buildings, and a third single-storey building will soon be built in stage two.
Microsoft’s Dublin center runs at a Power Usage Effectiveness of 1.25, according to the company, compared with averages of about 2.0 for the business and 1.6 for other Microsoft facilities.
More recently, Apple has said that it’ll assemble data centres in Denmark and Ireland which will use 100 percent renewable energy.
Collectively they’ll power European variants of online services like iTunes, Apple Maps, Siri and iMessage in an environmentally sensible manner.