Kildare County Council has granted permission for a €3 billion ($3.52bn) data center near Naas, Ireland.

The three-hectare campus will be located at Jigginstown, Halverstown, and Newhall, Naas, on lands bound to the east by the M7 Business Park.

The council issued the notification of the decision on August 20. Herbata Limited, the operator, applied for permission to construct six two-storey data center buildings, with gas turbines, gas engines, and battery energy storage systems within each plant area.

Each facility will contain a 24,755 sqm (266,460 sq ft) data hall offering 30MW of capacity, giving the campus 180MW at full buildout.

The proposal was announced in August 2024, but in July of this year, Herbata revised its development plans to include more renewable power.

It pledged to obtain 50 percent of its power from renewable energy sources via Power Purchase Agreements, with the other half coming from an on-site gas-fired power plant. Though natural gas is a polluting energy source, Herbata wants to transition to hydrogen power, and says the campus will eventually draw all its energy from burning hydrogen.

Herbata’s chief executive, Gerry Prendergast, told the Irish Times that he expected opponents of the data center to appeal the decision to An Coimisiun Pleanala, the Irish planning body responsible for adjudicating planning appeals.

An appeal would require the Irish planning body to reconsider whether the project should be permitted or not. The body is subject to a statutory objective to make a decision to grant or refuse permission within 18 weeks. The board’s decision is final, and can only be appealed on procedural and legal grounds through judicial review.

Many other data center development plans have been subject to appeal. In July, Ireland’s National Trust appealed against planning permission granted to a data center in County Louth, and in May, bestselling author Sally Rooney and others contested Mayo County Council’s decision to grant permission to Avaio’s data center.

Herbata is owned by Robert Moffett, an engineer and entrepreneur who previously founded forklift manufacturer Combilift.