Here’s a rare piece of heartening tech news to buoy you toward the weekend:
A data center in the West of Ireland, opposed by novelist Sally Rooney, has just had its planning consent overturned on the grounds that it breaches Irish national climate policy.
The facility, which was granted planning permission last year despite pushback from local residents, was set to be built in Killala, Co Mayo by Mayo Data Hub Ltd, part of US firm Avaio Digital.
Rooney—the Mayo-born author whose novels have surged into cultural prominence over the past decade—filed an objection in January with Mayo County Council, warning that approval would raise carbon emissions and heighten blackout risks, and asserting that “climate change represents an immediate and unprecedented threat to our way of life here in Mayo and to the future of human life around the world.”
In November 2024, Rooney published a viral cri de coeur in the Irish Times that opened with a grim assertion: “If fossil fuels keep burning at present rates, we are headed for apocalyptic civilizational collapse.”
As the government has branded Ireland as “the Silicon Valley of Europe” (yes, the sentiment is shared by many), data centers now absorb nearly a quarter of the nation’s electricity, up from about 5% in 2015. In December of last year, the state acted to lift an effective moratorium on new data-center connections to the grid, a restriction that had stood since 2021.
Rooney is no stranger to political engagement, having emerged in recent years as one of the literary world’s most outspoken advocates for Palestinian rights. In August last year, she risked arrest by pledging to back Palestine Action, despite the group being proscribed as a terrorist organization in the UK.
May Rooney’s successful stand encourage other prominent writers to voice opposition to the spread of data centers across the country. As an old Irish saying goes, “the only thing better than firebombing a data center is preventing one from being built in the first place.”
