AI data centres have leapt up the political agenda at a staggering pace.
Under mounting pressure from campaigners, the Scottish Government last week announced measures to monitor more closely the developments’ environmental impact.
But activists want them to go further – and they have good reason to be optimistic the tide is with them.
AI data centres are huge collections of computers which are able to provide the computing power to train large language models (LLMs), like ChatGPT.
They require massive amounts of energy and require to be kept cool so they don’t overheat and break.
For these reasons, Scotland is viewed by developers as a good place to build. The country’s cooler climate means it’s less intensive to keep systems cool.
But it’s also seen as a good place to build energy-intensive infrastructure because they are considered a “significant developments of national importance” in the most recent planning framework published by the Scottish Government back in February 2023.
In this document, they are described as “green data centres” without any explanation of what makes them green, what the criteria for that designation is, with those decisions to be taken by local authorities.
What is clear from the document is that the Scottish Government wanted them built, giving them a favourable weighting in planning decisions.
This has sparked a rash of planning applications – many of which campaigners believe are effectively land speculation rather than genuine statements of intent to build – which have been met with opposition from the communities who could end up living beside them.
Action to Protect Rural Scotland (APRS) has been at the forefront of the campaign against AI data centres and welcomed the Scottish Government’s announcement last Monday that two proposed sites would need to produce environmental impact assessments, while all new applications will now need to be flagged to ministers.
But they want the Government to go further. Ministers should put a pause on all AI data centre developments in the pipeline, they say.
APRS director Kat Jones told The National she believed the steps already announced could point the way to the Scottish Government’s approach to the issue in future.
She said: “In the eight months it has taken for the Scottish Government to start to listen to our points, a lot of extremely concerned communities have started campaigning, and much wider awareness of the issues has built up.
“We are hopeful this is the start of a real awareness in Scottish Government of the seriousness of this issue.”
John Swinney could announce further steps like a moratorium when he unveils his new programme for government next week when Holyrood returns after summer recess.
He’s under pressure to do exactly that by his party, with the SNP’s national council voting in favour of a pause last month. The Scottish Greens are also campaigning for a moratorium and could use the issue as leverage if Swinney proves resistant to calls for a pause. If that happens, we know who had his ear.
MSPs of all stripes and ministers all the way up to Swinney have been subject to a lobbying blitz by the industry, with at least 31 meetings taking place since the start of last year.
The First Minister and then-business minister Richard Lochhead met with American AI cloud company CoreWeave, which is partnering with DataVita on a multi-billion-pound AI growth zone in North Lanarkshire, in November to discuss the “importance of resilient and sustainable data infrastructure”, according to the lobbying register.
There is big money behind the AI data centre boom and they won’t want to give up without a fight.
Where the dice will fall is anyone’s guess. Scotland has taken bold steps on environmental issues before – such as the bans on fracking and nuclear power. Could it do so again?
