Emerald Extractivism: Borders, Energy, and Data Technologies in Ireland

Keywords: data centers, energy infrastructure, environmental humanities
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Friday
Session Start / End Time: 2/25/2022 08:00 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/25/2022 09:20 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 47

Abstract

In November 2020, a video surfaced on Twitter showing the earth moving underneath the feet of a local hillwalker. The video was documenting a massive peat landslide at the border between County Donegal (in the Republic of Ireland, ROI) and County Tyrone (in Northern Ireland, NI), which was caused by the construction of the 19-turbine Meenbog Wind Farm. The landslide destroyed a vast swathe of active peat bog and polluted a significant watershed which spanned both sides of the border, prompting action from agencies and organizations in ROI, NI, and the UK. Meenbog Wind Farm had in 2019 sold all its future energy to global logistics and cloud giant Amazon to power its data centers in Dublin, over 200km away from this rural Donegal wind farm. The company’s decarbonization efforts were following fault lines and toxic legacies of colonial expansion, the imagined perpetual growth of data systems having unintended consequences at the border between ROI and NI. By analyzing data center and energy policy, public discourse around these systems, and drawing upon site-specific fieldwork, this paper will confront the re-organization of the border between ROI and NI with regards to emerging renewable energy and data entanglements and the complications they present to decarbonization efforts on either side of the border. It will approach bordering mechanisms cutting through Ireland as sites of contestation about what present and future extractive energy and data supply chains will look like, who will bear their burdens, and who will have a voice in shaping them.