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Greens will, this week, force a vote on a moratorium of hyperscale AI data centres, reports the Sunday Mail today. This debate, follows a members business debate last week brought by Graham Simpson MSP.
That debate did not end in a vote, but had a remarkable level of agreement between the parties on the issue of the need for the Scottish Government to put in place guidance and a strategic approach for hyperscale AI data centres, and to pause planning applications while this can be done.
APRS welcomes this debate and says that the case for a moratorium is even stronger since the recent application for another hyperscale AI data centre in the AI Growth zone at Chapelhall. There is now power demand for data centres in live planning applications equivalent to the output of Torness nuclear power station (1.19GW). The power station is due to be decommissioned in 2028 and the four hyperscale data centres which have submitted planning applications since May 2026 add up to 1.17 GW of power demand [1].
The most recent application, for a 120MW data centre which is part of the planned 500MW of data centres in the AI Growth zone near Chapelhall, has a deadline for comments and objections of 3rd October. APRS have made an interactive map to help people understand the extent of the developments that are proposed in the area. [2]
The most recent two applications, Chapelhall and Greenock, are just the tip of the iceberg in Scotland with an additional 6GW in local authority planning portals which has not yet submitted a planning application but could do at any time. [3]
APRS suggest that the Scottish Government needs to look at the risk of blackouts if the data centres in the planning system get the go ahead. Two weeks ago Ofgem, the GB energy markets regulator, admitted in a consultation document that “between November 2024 and June 2025, contracted demand in the connection queue increased from 41 GW to 125 GW. Of this, around 73 GW are data centres”. They also note that over 93% of that figure are for data centres over 100MW [4]. Their press release quoted a figure of ‘at least 80GW’. This had grown significantly since Ofgem’s previous consultation in February 2026, which put demand from data centres at 50MW.
Contracted demand is the electricity demand that developers have received connection offers for, and signed agreements for, but which is not yet operational.
To put this in context, the peak demand of Great Britain in 2025 was 45.8GW, which was hit on 9 January 2025, and 2025 saw an average demand over the year of 31.7 GW (weekdays) and 28.8GW (weekends). So the demand that has been already contracted to data centres is 1.5 times peak GB demand and is more than twice national average power demand.
Kat Jones, Director of APRS said:
“The debate last week had a remarkable level of agreement between the parties on this issue. We hope that this debate will result in Parliament agreeing that a pause on hyperscale data centres has become necessary at this point to allow time for a strategic approach to be put in place.
“The hyperscale data centre applications are coming in thick and fast. There is now 1.2GW of data centre power demand in live planning applications, as much as is generated by Torness nuclear power station, with 6GW more that could come in any day. The pace of developers putting in planning applications is completely eclipsing the power of the Scottish Government to take any control of the situation, unless they use the planning system to pause applications while they put in their strategic approach.
“We believe that parties across the political spectrum are aware that NESO has overpromised on grid connections for data centres, and that there is an urgent need for the Scottish Government to properly examine the situation and look at what the implications of this are for Scotland.”
NOTES
[1] Hyperscale data centres which have submitted planning applications
| Hyperscale Data Centre | Stage of Planning | Capacity |
| Auchtertool | Planning Permission in Principle | 600MW |
| Larbert | Full Planning Application | 300MW |
| Chapelhall DV4 | Planning Permission in Principle | 120MW |
| Greenock | Planning Permission in Principle | 150MW |
| TOTAL | 1170MW | |
| Edinburgh, Gyle | Planning Permission in Principle Called in by the Scottish Government | 213MW |
[2] https://aprs.scot/chapelhall-ai-growth-zone/
[3] To see all the Data Centres in the Planning system (planning and pre-planning) please see the Data Centre Map Table
[4]
An extract from the 29 July Ofgem consultation document.
Of the 73GW in the queue, most of the MW capacity is extra-large and hyperscale projects
When considering the feasibility of this pipeline of data centre development materialising and the volume of possible speculative, non-viable projects:
- Peak GB electricity demand in 2025/2610 was 45 GW.
- This overall pipeline of data centre development represents £693 billion of implied total capex, around 23% of UK GDP in 2025, assuming an average capex of £9.5m per MW (see Chapter 5 for details on how this is derived).
- Bloomberg analysis and reporting in February 2026 suggest around $650 billion of global capex into AI infrastructure by the four largest tech companies: Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Meta, Microsoft
As well as new data centre projects joining the queue, our analysis shows that between May 2024 and August 2025 at least 9 GW of data centres in the transmission queue had modified their connection request from a ‘battery’ technology to data centre. A number of stakeholders have pointed to a financial incentive structure that make battery, and other technologies, increasingly likely to modify their current connection to become data centres at the next application window, also as a result of connections reform changes.