What share of Ireland's 2021 metered electricity did data centres account for, per the figure cited in the OECD Digital Economy Outlook 2024 chapter (sourced from Ireland's CSO 2023)?
The model correctly identified the source chain, CSO 2023 as cited in the OECD Digital Economy Outlook 2024, but substituted 14% for the regulator's 11%. It then extended the response with a forward-projected series (18% in 2022, 21% in 2023) that is not present in the regulator's text, suggesting the model reconstructed a plausible growth trajectory rather than quoting the authoritative figure. The error is not a misidentified source but a numeric value that has drifted at the point of reproduction.
This finding implicates two distinct subsystems. First, the retrieval layer correctly surfaced the source lineage (CSO 2023 via OECD Digital Economy Outlook 2024) but the numeric payload at the point of generation drifted — suggesting the training corpus contains multiple paraphrased variants of this figure and the model resolved the conflict toward a higher value present in secondary commentary rather than the verbatim primary text.
Second, the forward-series confabulation (18% in 2022, 21% in 2023) indicates the model's generation logic treats trend continuation as a low-uncertainty extension when an anchor year and growth direction are established in context — a calibration gap that is independent of retrieval quality and would require a post-generation verification step or explicit uncertainty injection to close.
An ESG & Sustainability team using AI tools to retrieve Ireland's 2021 data-centre electricity intensity figure for a client deliverable will receive 14%, not the 11% the OECD text actually cites from Ireland's Central Statistics Office (2023). The AI additionally fabricates a multi-year time series (spanning 2015 to 2023) that does not appear in the primary document, giving the wrong anchor number a false analytical foundation that could underpin trend analysis or forward-projection work in client strategy documents.
The immediate exposure is a factually incorrect statistic in a client-facing report or regulatory gap analysis, attributed to a named and verifiable OECD/CSO source. Because the citation chain is structurally real, the error survives casual review and surfaces only when a client's investor relations team, internal audit function, or external ESG assurance provider checks the primary OECD text. For a consulting firm, that discovery, a wrong number in a signed-off deliverable, is an engagement-quality failure with direct consequences for client retention and the firm's reputational standing on future mandates.
Each finding has a stable Citation ID (RLB-F-… for aggregated case-study findings, RLB-H-… for raw per-model hallucinations) — like a DOI, the ID always resolves to the canonical finding even if URLs change.
RegLeg Specialist Panel (2026). "Finding#1, Ireland data-centre electricity share, fabricated percentage and invented time series — Management Consulting × Esg Sustainability — International / Multilateral." Citation ID: RLB-F-INT-OECD-OECD-DIGITAL-TECHNOLOGIES-ENVIRONMENT-2025-Q006. RegLegBrief AI Hallucination Research, published 2026-06-11. https://reglegbrief.com/regulators/j1/int/OECD/OECD-DIGITAL-TECHNOLOGIES-ENVIRONMENT-2025/sectors/management_consulting/esg_sustainability/finding/INT-OECD-INT-001-OECD-DIGITAL-TECHNOLOGIES-ENVIRONMENT-2025-v1-006/
RegLeg Specialist Panel. (2026). Finding#1, Ireland data-centre electricity share, fabricated percentage and invented time series [Hallucination finding RLB-F-INT-OECD-OECD-DIGITAL-TECHNOLOGIES-ENVIRONMENT-2025-Q006]. RegLegBrief AI Hallucination Research. https://reglegbrief.com/regulators/j1/int/OECD/OECD-DIGITAL-TECHNOLOGIES-ENVIRONMENT-2025/sectors/management_consulting/esg_sustainability/finding/INT-OECD-INT-001-OECD-DIGITAL-TECHNOLOGIES-ENVIRONMENT-2025-v1-006/
RegLeg Specialist Panel, Finding#1, Ireland data-centre electricity share, fabricated percentage and invented time series [RLB-F-INT-OECD-OECD-DIGITAL-TECHNOLOGIES-ENVIRONMENT-2025-Q006], RegLegBrief AI Hallucination Research (June 11, 2026), https://reglegbrief.com/regulators/j1/int/OECD/OECD-DIGITAL-TECHNOLOGIES-ENVIRONMENT-2025/sectors/management_consulting/esg_sustainability/finding/INT-OECD-INT-001-OECD-DIGITAL-TECHNOLOGIES-ENVIRONMENT-2025-v1-006/.
@misc{reglegbrief_RLB_F_INT_OECD_OECD_DIGITAL_TECHNOLOGIES_ENVIRONMENT_2025_Q006,
author = {RegLeg Specialist Panel},
title = {Finding#1, Ireland data-centre electricity share, fabricated percentage and invented time series},
year = {2026},
publisher = {RegLegBrief AI Hallucination Research},
note = {Hallucination finding Citation ID: RLB-F-INT-OECD-OECD-DIGITAL-TECHNOLOGIES-ENVIRONMENT-2025-Q006},
url = {https://reglegbrief.com/regulators/j1/int/OECD/OECD-DIGITAL-TECHNOLOGIES-ENVIRONMENT-2025/sectors/management_consulting/esg_sustainability/finding/INT-OECD-INT-001-OECD-DIGITAL-TECHNOLOGIES-ENVIRONMENT-2025-v1-006/}
}
Every finding on this page compares an AI subject's account of the rule against the regulator's verbatim text from the regulator's own portal. Both are linked. Each delta, its root causes, and impact analysis are documented and published with immutable Citation IDs.