Data sinks, carbon services: Waste, storage and energy cultures on Ireland’s peat bogs

Abstract

This article examines strategies by the Irish state to phase out the extraction and burning of peat as a carbon fuel source in relation to the growing energy demands of data centres. One of the major proposals within the ‘just transition’ for post-extractive peat boglands is to incentivise the construction of data centres and associated energy infrastructures alongside bog reclamation projects to encourage carbon sequestration. These entangled plans for data, energy and carbon ‘storage’, driven by large-scale and transformative relations to boglands, inherit colonial ways of valuing bogs as ‘wastelands’ that must be put to work for industrial capital. We argue that through paired digital and green industrial strategies, the transformative energy cultures and frontiers of capital continue to expand beyond the apparent sites of data and energy infrastructural development, penetrating deeper into the earth and its atmosphere.