Data centres used 20 per cent more electricity last year compared to the year before.
They now account for 21 per cent of the total electricity consumption in the state.
CSO figures show urban households used 18 per cent, while rural households used 10 per cent.
Chief Executive of Friends of the Earth Ireland Oisin Coughlan says there needs to be a moratorium on new datacentres:
"It's competition for renewable electricity, for sure, because these data centers want to present themselves as being greener than they are, and they are buying now directly the output of solar farms, for example. And our concerns are that will put people off renewable electricity, in the sense of saying, 'Oh, all this stuff that's being built is being built just to serve as data centers', where actually we need that electricity".
