Our research into Linde’s Irish operations recently caught the attention of national media, with the Irish Times reporting on Linde’s energy spending. Here’s why:
The public debate on Ireland’s grid constraints focuses almost entirely on Big Tech data centers – which is fair, considering data centers now account for more than a fifth of Ireland’s power demand. In 2021, Dublin became one of the first cities in the world to institute a moratorium on new grid connections. While that ban has since eased, the issues have deepened.
The strain on Ireland’s grid is now so acute that EirGrid warns of an elevated risk of an “electricity crisis” and severe power outages through 2028. But while the tech sector faces intense pressure over its energy appetite, our recent investigation reveals a significant blind spot in the conversation.
Enter industrial gas giant Linde plc. Globally, Linde consumes more electricity per year than Google, Microsoft or Meta. Linde’s total annual electricity consumption worldwide exceeds entire countries, including Ireland.
Because Linde is legally incorporated in Ireland, you would expect its local operations to face similar scrutiny to Big Tech. Instead, operating through its subsidiary BOC Gases, its local electricity demand has gone largely unnoticed.
Nationally, Linde’s footprint is driven by two industrial gas production sites located in Dublin and Cork. While these sites represent a fraction of its global operations, our analysis shows their combined local impact is significant. Based on the company’s reported electricity consumption at the Dublin site and a conservative estimate based on industry data for the Cork facility, Linde consumes roughly 85,000 MWh of electricity per year in Ireland.
To put that into perspective, the annual power consumed by just these two industrial sites could run every single home in County Dublin for nearly two months, based on data from the Irish Central Statistics Office.
Feeding this large energy appetite is expensive. Ireland’s wholesale power prices have consistently ranked among the highest in Europe over the last five years. Based on Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI) commercial tariff data, we estimate Linde’s annual Irish electricity spend over the 2022–2025 period averaged €18.0 million per year. This is a hefty operational cost.
Our investigation, however, finds Linde appears to have done little to address its dependence on grid electricity. Despite Ireland’s healthy PPA market, supported by EU and Irish policy, Linde does not appear to have procured any renewable energy in the Republic of Ireland, to date, according to Linde’s disclosures to the Carbon Disclosure Project.
As our latest report shows, Linde’s underinvestment in renewables across the regions we reviewed, including Ireland, South Korea, India, Germany and the United States, exposes customers and shareholders to price volatility and competitive weakness. You can read more about the shareholder resolution filed at Linde in that report and in the ICCR 2026 Proxy Voting Guide.
Linde’s passive approach to energy procurement is ill suited to an era of rising competition with tech companies for clean power supply. Although Linde’s operations in Ireland are smaller than its tech peers, the rise of data centers in Ireland has introduced major new players to the power market. Big Tech has been aggressive in securing corporate Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) – with Microsoft alone contracting 28% of Ireland’s total 2030 renewable target by the end of 2022. To compete with these large players, Linde will need to adopt a more proactive approach to its procurement.
When large energy users fail to add new renewable capacity to the system, it can have compounding effects on local communities. Groups such as Friends of the Earth have highlighted that the rapid expansion of corporate electricity demand without enough corresponding investment in new generation capacity has increased pressure on Ireland’s grid and raised electricity prices. This growth has effectively acted as a hidden tax on households, which paid an estimated €715 million more in electricity bills between 2015 and 2023 to support the strained system. Although Linde’s electricity consumption in Ireland is not growing like the tech companies’, its heavy reliance on grid electricity still adds to the strain on the electricity system, with everyday consumers bearing a share of the costs.
Furthermore, this widening supply and demand gap forces Ireland to increasingly rely on fossil gas to meet demand during grid shortages. This dependency prolongs the entire Irish system’s vulnerability to global energy shocks, inflates wholesale power prices for everyday consumers, and jeopardises Ireland’s national climate targets.
Ultimately, Linde can no longer rely on a passive energy strategy. Linde will face fierce competition for renewable electricity from the tech giants that have long dominated the Irish PPA market. To safeguard its Irish operations, it is time for the company to fully disclose its location-matched renewable consumption and actively pursue PPAs to secure additional renewable capacity.
