One point twenty one Gigawatts??!??

How many times could you go  ‘Back to the Future’ on the energy that would be consumed by new data centres planned in Scotland?  

Quite a few it turns out. 

Famously the DeLorean needed 1.21 Gigawatts (GW) of energy [1] to take Marty back to 1985, in the film ‘Back to the Future’, which is just a bit more than the power supplied by Torness nuclear power station (1.19 GW)  [2] 

See below for a list of all the data centres being planned

Countryside Charity APRS has been looking into the power requirements of data centres in the Scottish planning system and has found that the energy needed could power a few DeLorean time hops.

Dr Kat Jones, Director of APRS said.

“We noticed that there were loads of press releases put out by developers about hyperscale data centres being planned all over Scotland, and it just seemed like the quantities of energy proposed to be used was getting ridiculous, and so we decided to look into it. We’ve found that the energy demand of all the data centres in the planning system at the moment would power the DeLorean to go Back to the Future four times. And there are two more data centres that are not yet in formal planning processes that will add another time hop at least. [3]

“This is an absolutely mind blowing amount of energy, much more than Scotland’s total energy demand [4]. I really empathised with Doc Brown in the film, running round his workshop shouting “1.21 Gigawatts”, because that’s how felt when I added up the numbers.”

‘Bragawatts’

Data centre developers are not shy about the amount of energy they use. In fact the size of a data centre is expressly measured by their energy use, because energy use is so closely related to processing capacity. A phrase ‘Bragawatts’ [5] has been coined, to describe the phenomenon of talking up the scale of data centres.

Kat said

“It’s hard to imagine another area of life where boasting about how much energy something uses would be a selling point. You don’t see washing machines, houses and TVs sold on the basis of how much energy they use – rather the reverse. Society has been trying to be as efficient on energy as possible to deal with the existential threat of climate breakdown, after all”

Up until 2024 there was between 10 and 30 MW capacity [6]  in Scotland. But developers are now looking to build ‘hyperscale’ data centres. Hyperscale refers to data centres with a capacity of over 100 MW. There are 17 hyperscale data centres APRS has found being planned in Scotland, 13 in the planning system, two in pre-application consultation process, and two which have not yet entered formal planning processes. [3]

“None of these hyperscale data centres have been granted planning permission yet, so the Scottish government has a window now to take seriously the threat to Scotland’s energy grid and plans for net zero, and get a grip on the planning system regarding data centres.”

Diesel Generators and no Environmental Impact Assesments

Data centres need a constant energy source and so can not be run solely on renewables. When the wind is not blowing they draw on the grid which, in Scotland, will require large amount of energy to be brought in from non-renewable sources, or they have to use back up generators, which are usually either gas turbines or diesel generators. In the case of the Edinburgh data centre planned at the Gyle, there are two compounds proposed to house the diesel generators [7] they will need for back-up generation.

Kat said:

“Given that the South Gyle data centre is proposed to be 200MW, which is the energy that is needed to power 200,000 homes, I dread to think how much diesel will be being burned in Edinburgh, just upwind of the city centre, if this data centre turned to its backup generation. The fact that no Environmental Impact Assessment for this development is being required is a national scandal [8].”

Of the five data centres which have reached that stage in the planning process, only one has been required to produce an EIA. [3]

APRS and Environmental Rights Centre Scotland wrote to the Minister responsible for planning, Ivan McKee,on 18th December to raise concerns about the lack of environmental standards for data centres and the energy they will consume. [9]

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Notes:

[1] Extract of ‘Back to the Future’ on 1.21 Gigawatts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDuZqYeNiOA

[2] Torness supplies up to 1190 MW to the National Grid. It is scheduled to close in 2028 https://www.onr.org.uk/our-work/what-we-regulate/operational-power-stations/operational-sitesfacilites/torness

[3] Data Centres being planned in Scotland

Total: = 4317 MW plus 100-600 MW plus 332MW (average size for the unlisted site.)

Gives a Total of 4749 – 5249 MW currently in the planning system and in pre application consultation

In addition there are hyperscale Data Centres proposed in Irvine (1000 MW) and Cockenzie (size undefined).

Notes: the current application for the Data Vita site is for an extension to the current data centre, but up to 450MW expected on the site in future.

[4] Scotland’s current winter peak gross demand is just over 4 GW NESO (National Energy System Operator).

[5] BBC What’s the big deal about AI data centres? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckg2ldpl9leo

[6] In 2024 Scotland’s capacity of data centres was estimated at 30MW by UK Department for Science, Innovation & Technology May 2025.

And at 10MW by Scottish Enterprise. Appendix B Green Data Centres Programme Update  June 2025. 

Colocation data centres are those where customers rent space for cloud computing, AI processing and storage. These are what the new hyperscale data centres will be. Enterprise data centres are servers owned by the company that uses them, for example University servers. 

[7] The diesel generation compounds are marked on the site layout plan, one of the documents of the Planning in Principle application 25/04239/PPP 

Diagram taken from Site Layout Plan (my annotation to make text clearer)

The application is quite vague about the power for the generators, which are marked on the diagram of the development. The energy and utilities strategy doesn’t mention how they will be fuelled, except that it won’t be by mains gas. It is just in the Air Quality Assessment where they are identified as diesel generators throughout the document, which states at 1.2.3 “The main air pollutants of concern during the operational period are NO2, PM10 and PM2.5 emissions associated with proposed and existing road traffic and NO2 emissions associated with the back-up power (diesel fired) generators” and 8.1.5 “Detailed air quality assessment of the operations of diesel generators should be undertaken when sufficient detail is available to determine significance of potential air quality impacts.” 

[8] The council re-examined the EIA decision and on 18 December confirmed that no EIA is required. The planning reference is 25/04239/SCR and the documents are on the planning portal here.

[9] APRS and ERCS wrote to the Scottish Government about environmental damage from data centres on 18 December https://aprs.scot/press-release/data-centres-in-the-scottish-planning-system-would-double-scotlands-energy-demands/