The Scottish Government has announced that applications for new data centres exceeding 50MW will have to be notified to Scottish Ministers within 7 days. The requirement applies to both new planning applications and any that are currently being considered. The Direction came into force on Monday 17 August.
(EIA : Environmental Impact Assessment)
The Orkney News has previously published information about Data Centres and the rush to get them agreed to by Planning in Local Authorities. In ‘The Risks of AI‘ :
The energy demands of AI through Data Centres is going to be enormous to feed its insatiable appetite.
In 2024, data centres accounted for about 1.5% of the world’s electricity consumption. But demand is projected to double to 945 TWh by 2030, potentially exceeding Japan’s current total electricity consumption. The United States accounts for the largest share of global data centre electricity consumption (45%), followed by China (25%) and Europe (15%). In the US, data centres already represent 4.4% of energy consumption. The need to finance the unprecedented expansion of power grid infrastructure could lead to public funding being diverted away from social and environmental projects and delay the retirement of existing fossil fuel-intensive infrastructure. LSE
Hannah Mary Goodlad, Shetland SNP MSP, and Public Finance Minister in the Scottish Government says that the new planning structure applies to data centre developments exceeding 50 Megawatts (MW) power capacity.
She said:
“Data centres is a rapidly emerging sector, and planning has an important role to play in considering applications, harnessing economic opportunities, and finding solutions which align with our climate goals.
“We must balance the economic and employment interests in developing data centres with national energy, climate and community wealth building ambitions, which are vital to our future prosperity, as well as the potential impact on local communities.
“It is essential to secure public benefits from this type of development, and I am clear that voices of communities that will be affected will be central to any considerations on data centres.”
The Scottish Parliament Information Centre (SPICe) published information in June and updated to coincide with this announcenment, on Data Centres.
A data centre is a structure, or part of a structure, used to house computing and data storage resources that support many aspects of modern life, including e-commerce, banking, public service delivery, and applications such as cloud computing and artificial intelligence (AI). The key components of a data centre typically include servers, storage systems, networking equipment, power supply, and cable management.
The publication explains the different sizes of data centres and gives as examples the two enormous ones which could be built in Scotland.
- Proposed Cato data centre, Auchtertool, Fife: the buildings that make up this proposed site would cover an area of 280,000 square metres – equivalent to almost 40 football pitches. The main data centre buildings would be up to 35 metres high, roughly equivalent to the height of a 12-storey block of flats
- Proposed Larbert data centre campus: includes two data centre buildings with a floor area of 128,863 square metres with a building height of 25 metres (with flues extending to 28 metres). It also includes an 11,500 square metre electricity substation and associated facilities.
These massive industrial complexes in our communities use huge amounts of electricity, and of water.
“the proposed Cato data centre would consume 7.7% of all electricity generated in Scotland during 2024….the proposed Cato data centre running at full capacity would consume the same amount of electricity as 1.6 million typical households in a year.” – SPICe
Given the drought being experienced in many parts of the UK this summer, and with climate change, future summers, are these massive Data centres a wise use of such a precious natural resource?
Shockingly there is no one up to date document which shows how many data centres (of whatever size ) are being proposed in Scotland.
Action to Protect Rural Scotland (APRS) has produced a map of proposed data centres in Scotland, which currently lists 26 proposals. The link will take you to the map where you can click on the map to find out information on the capacity, stage of planning, developer.
And each proposed site has a dedicated webpage with more information including maps and plans, links to planning documents, and contact details of local campaign groups.
Action to Protect Rural Scotland wants a moratorium on these hyperscale data centres “until the Scottish Government examines the impact of them on Scotland’s climate targets, electricity grid and communities” and that they have to publish an Environmental Impact Assessment. They also want a a proper definition of what a ‘Green Data Centre’ actually is.
The late Professor Stephen Hawking said of AI “Success in creating AI would be the biggest event in human history. Unfortunately, it might also be the last, unless we learn how to avoid the risks.”
One of those risks is the creation of massive Data Centres, industrialising our landscapes, and consuming energy and water resources at an alarming rate.
And another is this:
Fiona Grahame