… and that there is no definition of what a ‘green’ data centre is.
This weekend our Data Centres Campaign was featured in two National Newspapers, the Herald, and also on the front page of the national. Here we discuss what was revealed in those articles and why it is important.
We can’t post the whole articles here due to copyright but here we summarise the main points of each article and give the quotes from Kat Jones, APRS Director, that went into the articles.
The Herald: ‘Green’ data centres could derail Scotland’s net-zero plans
Vicky Allen in the Herald covered what we discovered from answers to written Parliamentary Questions put to the Minister. Ariane Burgess MSP, who is also convenor of the Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee asked questions about a reference in National Planning Framework 4 (NPF4) to ‘Green data Centres’.
What we discovered was pretty shocking.
‘Green data centres’ are mentioned in reference to National Priority 12: Digital Fibre network of NPF4. The wording is as follows:
A development contributing to ‘Digital Fibre Network’ ….. is designated a national development:
a) Installation of new and/or upgraded broadband cabling on land and sub-sea for fixed line and mobile networks; and
b) Green data centres.
We asked whether only ‘Green data centres’ contributing to the fibre network are classed as national developments or whether the government considered all ‘Green data centres’ national development. We also asked for a definition of ‘Green’ which would be applied to data centres seeking National Development status.
The answers given were that Ministers consider all data centres part of National Development 12. And that there is no definition of ‘green’ with respect to a data centre.
The Herald: ‘Green’ Data Centres Could Derail Scotland’s Net-zero plans
The charity, Action to Protect Rural Scotland (APRS) called for the Scottish Government to “require all data centres to be subject to strict environmental reporting standards”.
Kat Jones, director of APRS, said: “We are very concerned that the Government has no definition or guidance on what constitutes a ‘green’ data centre. We are seeing applications for huge data centres springing up all over the central belt of Scotland and every one of them is claiming to be ‘green’.
“This comes as little surprise when we discover that ‘green data centres’ are being classed by the Government as ‘national developments’, giving them a privileged position in the planning system.”
“At present Data centres are saying they are ‘Green’ because they use Scotland’s grid electricity. Under that definition every household and business in Scotland is green. The Scottish Government is promoting Scotland as a location for ‘hyperscale’ data centres so they need to have a handle on their environmental impacts. These data centres use mind-bogglingly large amounts of energy with one data centre using the energy equivalent to all the households in a city.”
“A single data centre planned in Irvine will have an energy demand of 1GW, this is the equivalent of twice the maximum output of the UK’s largest onshore windfarm, Whitelees near Glasgow”.
“We are calling on the Government to require all data centres to be subject to strict environmental and reporting standards. It seems, from the answers to these Parliamentary questions, that those standards are non-existent.
“We need to see leadership from Scottish Government. It is not enough to have warm words about “green” data centres, with no definition of what that is. Data centres will shred our net zero targets to pieces with the energy they are likely to consume unless they are properly regulated.
APRS, she said, has begun campaigning around data centres “because of the huge implications they have for our renewable energy targets”.
“Up until now,” she wrote in a blog on the charity’s website, “there has been a broad consensus on how much renewable energy will be needed to transition our economy away from fossil fuels. We have targets for renewable energy that mean Scotland should be on a pathway to net-zero. There has also been a consensus that reducing demand and efficiency are an absolutely vital part of the equation: insulating homes, public transport, circular economy.
“The failure of the Scottish Government to put in place a strategic spatial plan for energy infrastructure, as it has been called to do by the NGOs over the past fifteen years, has led to the developer-led approach we currently have where there seems little connection between where energy infrastructure is being consented, and where it is needed or where the transmission infrastructure is.”
The article also hears from Dan Evans, associate director at Lichfields planning and development consultancy, who in a recent report pointed out that the definition of a ‘green data centre’ is “not defined in NPF4, and it is not clear what measures are expected to ensure this (naturally very energy-intensive) land use is truly green”.
The article also quotes Campaign group for responsible technology Foxglove’s Director of advocacy, Donald Campbell.
In addition which was not mentioned in the article:
Given the paragraph after that including data centres in NPF4 reads
Lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions assessment
Depending on the nature of the projects taken forward and considering both direct and indirect effects, the lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions assessment concludes this development will likely have an overall negligible impact on achieving national greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets.
This must have been written without looking into the energy impact of data centres and really needs more scrutiny.
The National: ‘AI Data Centres are a threat to Scotland’
In a front-page article in the National, Hamish Morrison writes about a report from Centre for Public Enterprise, a New York based think-tank. The report outlined fears about AI fueling a data centre bubble that is likely to burst.
Kat’s quote was:
“Scotland is accelerating headlong into becoming collateral damage in this AI bubble as we see data centres queuing up to come to Scotland. If we allow this to happen it will be at the expense of the cost of living, as data centres create negligible permanent jobs and use mind-boggling amounts of energy, driving up electricity prices. For example, there is a moratorium on new housing developments in several London boroughs where Data Centres are using so much energy.
“We can only hope that this bubble collapses before the data centres that are planned in Scotland get built.
“It is hard to understand why the Scottish Government is so keen to welcome data centres into Scotland when they use inconceivably large amounts of energy, and water, are extremely noisy, drive up energy prices, and operate on a skeleton staff when in operation.”