In the last few minutes the Scottish Government announced that they will make Environmental Impact Assessments mandatory for all hyperscale data centres. Full wording of the statement is below.
Kat Jones said:
“This is extremely good news and something that we have been asking for since the start of our campaign, but without a moratorium the other essential work can’t be done. It was always a total no-brainer that hyperscale data centres should be required to do environmental impact assessments, and we haven’t met anyone yet who disagrees. It is good that the Scottish Government is, at last, recognising this too.
“This is an important, but limited, first step, and the other measures that need to be covered are set out well in the Labour amendment and the Green motion that will be debated this afternoon. A pause on planning decisions is absolutely essential. Just the first four applications under consideration at the moment would use as much energy as is generated by Torness nuclear power station, which is due to close in 2030. A modest pause will give time for the Government to put in place the necessary planning guidance, assess how much data centre capacity Scotland actually needs and where any should go, and assess and manage the impacts on the grid and the climate.”
One of the data centres that has an active planning application that will now be on hold while an Environmental Impact Assessment is produced, is a 120MW data centre at Chapelhall that would be part of the AI Growth Zone.
Diane Davidson of the campaign in Chapelhall said:
“This announcement about environmental Impact is certainly welcome news, and means that the application at Chapelhall will need to be put on hold for this to be done, but the moratorium is still needed across Scotland.
“The wrong developments, far too big and in the wrong places, have been proposed as part of a speculative rush. For Chapelhall, the issue is that we have proposals for multiple data centres in our area, and the huge amounts of energy infrastructure they require. We need to see what the overall plan is and have have the impacts assessed as a whole. The situation we have at the moment is confusing residents and is a huge burden on anyone seeking to do any scrutiny of what is happening here. It isn’t just the EIA which was the issue, this is far wider.
“There are still too many unanswered questions and residents are left either in the dark or feel like they don’t matter.
“We need a moratorium now until we have all the information.
“Pause the rush. Establish the facts as a whole.
“Only fools rush in, as they say.”
Statement from Scottish Government
Large data centre applications are set to face more stringent environmental requirements.
The Scottish Government has published a planning direction which requires an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) to be submitted during planning for all new data centres with a power capacity exceeding 50 megawatts (MW).
This follows a direction last month requiring planning authorities to notify Scottish Ministers of all new data centre applications within seven days of validation.
Public Finance Minister Hannah Mary Goodlad said:
“The Scottish Government recognises that data centres are a rapidly evolving sector attracting a broad range of views, opinions and concerns, and that evidence on the environmental impact of data centres continues to develop.
“As this is an emerging industry, we have the opportunity to get this right from the start. The guidance issued today is the next step in that process.
“We must balance the economic and employment interests in developing data centres with national energy, climate and community wealth building ambitions, which are vital to our future prosperity, as well as the potential impact on local communities.
“Ensuring that an Environmental Impact Assessment is always part of the application process will create a level playing field for developers and will ensure potentially significant environmental effects are considered from the outset.”
Letter from the chief planner
This is the detail of the Planning Direction: