Facebook to open data centre in Ireland - powered entirely by renewable energy

Facebook confirmed that it's going to start building it's first data centre in Ireland with further plans to power it entirely by renewable energy.

Opening in Clonee in County Meath, this will be Facebook's second data centre in Europe with the other located in Luleå, Sweden. This will also represent Facebook's further investment in Ireland with Dublin already being home to it's European headquarters since 2009. 

The other unique aspect of Facebook's new data centre is that it will be powered by renewable data in an effort to become one of the greenest data centres ever built and is estimated to cost €200 million. The data centre should be operational by the end of 2017 and could create up to 2,000 jobs according to Tom Furlong, Facebook's vice president of infrastructure. 

“Our data center in Clonee will be powered by 100 percent renewable energy, thanks to Ireland’s robust wind resources. This will help us reach our goal of powering 50 percent of our infrastructure with clean and renewable energy by the end of 2018.” said Furlong.

Dublin has become a popular hotspot for large tech companies with Apple, Google and Dropbox all having opened up their international headquarters in the Irish capital, which is partly thanks to it's low 12.5 per cent corporation tax. Because of this, Ireland has seen a significant growth in tech jobs in recent years and could be set for more IT job opportunities with news of Facebook's data centre.