Ireland’s energy regulator has put forward new policies to manage how data centers connect to the country’s electricity grid.

Following a consultation, Ireland’s energy regulator the Commission for Regulation of Utilities (CRU) this week published a proposed decision paper on the country’s connection policies for large load users (LUE), but almost solely focused on data centers.

“The aim of the proposed decision is to provide a pathway for LEU connections to the electricity system, having regard to the capacity of the system in relation to supply of energy and grid infrastructure,” the CRU said.

Under the proposed policies, new data centers connecting to the electricity network will be required to provide generation and/or storage capacity to match the requested connection capacity. Generation/storage could be on-site or local in proximity to the proposed facility.

The generation and/or storage accompanying new data centers will be required to participate in the electricity market.

Data center operators would also be required to provide information on their use of renewable energy and emissions.

The policy applies to “all data centers seeking to connect to the electricity network,” but would not apply to other LEUs like large manufacturing, where existing policies continue to apply.

EirGrid and ESB Networks would also be made to consider if the location of any requested data center connection “is in a constrained or unconstrained region,” publish electricity network capacity maps, and identify current and future areas of capacity constraints.

The CRU is inviting comments from interested parties by the 4th of April 2025 before a final decision is made.

The new policy does not propose the introduction of any new decisions around connections to the gas network.

Companies that replied to the original consultation include data center operators Vantage, CyrusOne, Keppel, and Equinix, as well as the Cloud Infrastructure Ireland and Digital Infrastructure Ireland associations and critical power firm Bloom.

Dublin is subject to a defacto moratorium on new data centers imposed by state-owned grid operator EirGrid, which has said it won’t grant any new application requests until 2028.

Several operators have looked to get around this with on-site power generation or connections to the country’s gas network, though many have still faced difficulty getting planning approval from local officials.