{"id":432853,"date":"2026-05-05T04:24:27","date_gmt":"2026-05-05T04:24:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/432853\/"},"modified":"2026-05-05T04:24:27","modified_gmt":"2026-05-05T04:24:27","slug":"australian-states-are-providing-free-electricity-through-renewables-why-cant-we","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/432853\/","title":{"rendered":"Australian states are providing free electricity through renewables \u2013 why can\u2019t we?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-91174671_secondary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom4 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop4\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\" data-testid=\"title-summary\">Irish consumers face some of the highest electricity prices in Europe, and the Government and energy suppliers need to get inventive\n<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"'Nationally, farms use about 3 to 5pc of the electricity supply'.  Photos: Don Moloney\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/63dcf5c2-9eec-45fb-8f6c-66d73048f1ed.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_caption1 indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_secondary indo-66f0fec7_regular indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop3 indo-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">&#8216;Nationally, farms use about 3 to 5pc of the electricity supply&#8217;.  Photos: Don Moloney<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Has anyone else heard ads on the radio recently targeting farmers and other businesses to reduce their electricity use at certain times of day? It\u2019s a little rich considering that data centres across the country swallow more than 20pc of the electricity on the grid and in comparison the average use of data centres in other European countries is about 4pc.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">However, I understand that data centres are now here to stay, with more expected because they like the fact that as a country we don\u2019t overheat and have a relatively stable political system.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Irish consumers face some of the highest electricity prices in Europe, and the Government and energy suppliers need&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":432854,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[246,61,60,82],"class_list":["post-432853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=432853"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432853\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/432854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=432853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=432853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=432853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}