LOCAL communities are set to gather at the Scottish Parliament on Wednesday to demand the Scottish Government takes action on regulating AI data centre developments.
It comes after thousands of people have signed petitions against data centres proposed for the Lammermuir Hills in the Borders, Auchtertool, a small village in Fife, and Larbert, a town near Falkirk.
Other sites, including the historic Hunterston estate in North Ayrshire, Blackdog near Aberdeen, and the former Royal Bank of Scotland headquarters in South Gyle, Edinburgh, are also being looked at by developers.
Concerns have been raised about the environmental impact and energy consumption of the huge industrial structures.
Now, protesters will rally at Holyrood at midday on Wednesday, ahead of a questions session for the climate and rural affairs minister. Three questions from MSPs, two from the SNP and one from the Greens, have been lodged about AI data centres.
In a statement announcing the protest, which has been planned by local campaigners from various areas subject to data centre proposals, the organisers said: "At 12 noon peaceful protesters will be gathering outside the Scottish Parliament ahead of rural affairs question to send a clear message to our MSPs: we do not support plans for hyperscale data centres across Scotland.
"This is an opportunity for everyone to make their voices heard and show that Scotland’s future should not be decided without proper scrutiny, robust planning policy, and meaningful public engagement."
The Scottish Greens and the City of Edinburgh Council have recently joined community calls to implement tighter Government-led regulation on data centre developments, raising the issue in Holyrood several times.
Both are also calling for a moratorium – a temporary ban – on new centres until a definition is provided by the Scottish Government.
At First Minister's Questions last week, Greens co-leader Ross Greer called on the First Minister to introduce a moratorium on "hyperscale" data centres in Scotland before parliament breaks for the summer.
But John Swinney refused to make any commitment to a pause or a national strategy, maintaining that defining green data centres is a decision for councils to make on a case-by-case basis.
He added that any future changes to planning frameworks would require an open discussion across Parliament and could not be a decision for him alone.
Former Green co-leader and current MSP Patrick Harvie told The National: “These proposals are vastly bigger than existing data centres and aren’t about socially beneficial use of technology, they’re just about the profit of wealthy corporations.
“If even a small number of them are granted planning permission it could have a huge impact on Scotland’s energy demand. It could divert hundreds of megawatts of renewable energy from homes, pushing up prices and potentially forcing more use of gas generators, undoing decades of good work in decarbonising our electricity.
“It is no wonder that so many communities are opposed to these developments and that they are taking their message to parliament.
“At present our councils are having to make judgments on these without the guidance in place to do so, and without being able to take a view on the national picture.
"Meanwhile the Scottish Government uses the term 'green data centres' without ever defining it, and without requiring environmental impact assessments.
“That is why the Scottish Greens have called for the government to introduce a moratorium on all hyperscale applications and to ensure that we have a national strategy in place to deal with them.”
There are currently at least 24 sites across Scotland being looked at for new data centres, collectively producing a projected energy demand of more than 6.2GW, although it is unlikely that all projects will be approved after submitting planning applications, or completed.
Scotland’s peak energy demand has been registered as just over 4GW according to the National Energy System Operator (Neso), meaning AI data centres could more than double the nation's peak demand.
The planning applications for the Auchtertool and South Gyle sites did not include an environmental impact assessment (EIA), something campaigners have warned is allowing developers to hide behind the branding of being a "green data centre", without there being a strict definition of what makes a site "green".
The Scottish Government offers no definition of what it means, or any requirements for a centre to be classed as green, and instead has said this decision sits with local authorities. However, campaigners have warned that without universal guidance, local authorities will struggle to properly assess the applications and the cumulative impact they could have on Scotland's climate ambitions and environment.
There also remains problems with an EIA, with communities often being swamped under a pile of paperwork with too little time to properly scrutinise it, according to campaigners Planning Democracy.
Environmental organisation Action to Protect Rural Scotland has campaigned for an urgent update to planning regulation around data centres, with director Kat Jones saying there has been "Olympic-level green washing" by the developers of so-called "green data centres", which can have huge impacts on the environment.
