AI data centres plan causes uproar across Scotland

Scotland looks set for an AI data centre crisis after plans were revealed detailing a massive number of data centres planned for construction on Scotland’s Central Belt.

ARPS, Scotland’s countryside charity, published an interactive map illustrating where the data centres are earmarked for.

The charity compiled the data over growing concerns about the impact of the data units on electricity prices, communities and the environment.

So far, at least 18 such data warehouse projects are seeking planning permission, the National reported, with a  further six in the pipeline.

ARPS is calling for the ­Scottish government to implement a moratorium on these centres until it does a “proper “assessment of the ­impacts on the electricity grid, ­climate emissions and communities”.

A spokesperson for the charity, Kat Jones, said:

Hyperscale data centres are some of the biggest buildings in the world and this is why we are seeing them being proposed mainly on greenbelt and Greenfield sites.

Their main requirements are large quantities of land and ­access to huge amounts of electricity and ­water. These buildings are huge, but the amount of energy they use is ­absolutely off the scale.

AI data centres: How might they impact you?

Kat Jones stated that the total demand for ­energy from the data centres in Scotland’s planning system is now 6,200 megawatts (MW).

Combined with the requirement for the six sites that haven’t completed all the ­planning stages yet, this would take the ­total to more than 11,000MW. That’s nearly three-times Scotland’s peak winter demand.

Jones didn’t hold back on stating the case clearly.

This is an inconceivable amount of energy that Scotland is being asked to divert to the use of hyperscale AI data centres, which will enrich a few billionaires in Silicon valley at the expense of the Scottish consumer.

No discussion on energy in ­Scotland can ignore the impact that these data centres would have on our electricity grid and energy prices.

We are calling for a moratorium to get some proper planning and ­policies in place.

Campaigners are rightly concerned about rising energy prices. In the US, areas with data centres have soared up to 267% according to Bloomberg data.

Communities must be consulted

Scottish communities are rallying against plans near them and have been encouraged by a recent UN report.

The report details the environmental impacts of AI and says communities must be included in discussions about data centres.

AI-sceptic, pro-democracy campaign group, Pull the Plug, told the Canary:

Data centres have become a key issue in our political conversation. They contribute to climate change, impact the wellbeing of our communities, undermine public services, and push up household bills and our general cost of living.

The public increasingly stomachs the costs of data centres without agreeing to them. That has to change.

Scotland resists the Datageddon

Scottish people are not taking the matter lightly. Hyper-local campaigns are emerging across the nation to resist the ugly, thirsty, energy-hungry monstrosities. Remember when wind turbines were “eyesores”?

Last week, more than 200 people attended a public meeting to oppose a data centre near Auchtertool village in Fife. The community council said it was “appalled” by Fife Council’s decision not to request even an environmental impact assessment.

Another campaign has been launched to halt a similar development in the Borders. They’ll hope to achieve a similar result as that in Edinburgh earlier this year.

Edinburgh councillors voted unanimously to refuse a proposed hyperscale centre at the former Royal Bank of Scotland headquarters in South Gyle.

One spokesperson for Save the ­Lammermuirs – Stop the Data ­Centre said afterwards that worries remained about the ­environmental impact.

We weren’t able to get any solid information and there is also the question of the local benefits – the numbers didn’t really hold up under scrutiny at this stage.

Sunlaws Development Company wants to build the Southside Data Centre on land near the village of Longformacus. The planned development on Roxburghe Estate is for three large, two-storey data centre buildings, each with a height up to 24m and ground footprint circa 27,000m².

Campaigners allege that it will lead to the “industrialisation” of the Lammermuir Hills, and are ­sceptical of the job and economic benefit ­estimates. About 100 members of the public attended an initial consultation at Longformacus Village Hall this week.

The SNP is already criticising the “great renewables robbery” where Scottish energy firms are forced to pay £1 billion to access the national grid. Companies in England and Wales get paid to do so.

But this massive, anti-worker construction madness — done entirely on the SNP’s watch  — must be counted as further theft of the people’s energy needs by unaccountable tech companies.

Featured image via the National