The campaign so far and what next (and podcast)

This week The National did a series on hyperscale data centres and this essay was published on the first day of the series. In it Kat Jones, APRS Director, explains about the campaign until now and where do we go from here? You can also watch the podcast she recorded with the National journalist Jamie Calder.

Today, along with fourteen communities which are affected by plans for hyperscale data centres, we have written to the First Minister to ask for him to heed calls from MSPs across the Chamber, as well as from their own SNP National Council, and put in place a moratorium for hyperscale AI data centres. 

MSPs will be returning to Holyrood next week after a summer in their constituencies, and will be very aware of the strength of feeling from local communities against proposals for hyperscale data centres across Scotland. Over the past few months communities have been making their voices heard to local decision makers. There have been protests, including at Hunterston, Auchtertool, Larbert and Ravenscraig, and the two planning applications which came in at the start of the summer have received thousands of objections each. Communities have been forced to become reluctant experts in the planning system, in local democracy, and in the technical specifications and requirements of hyperscale data centres.   

We at APRS are very familiar with the challenges that communities face when a major planning proposal comes in: we have been supporting communities to engage with the planning system to help protect their greenbelts and countryside for many decades. Often the first thing many in a community hear is when a planning application lands and they have 21 days to lodge an Objection, with thousands of pages of technical documents to read. 

In some ways the issues the hyperscale data centres developments bring are similar – with the benefits generally accruing to private interests and the consequences borne by the community, in terms of environmental, and often health, impacts. But the hyperscale data centres bring another dimension –  impacts go far, far beyond the local. The mind boggling amounts of energy that would be required by some of the biggest buildings on the planet create serious implications for climate, the grid, power generation infrastructure and energy prices. More and more evidence is surfacing, from the US, the Netherlands, and Ireland, of the impacts of these huge developments.

APRS always use the understanding we gain from supporting communities to be heard in the planning system to inform our campaign work to change the system for the better. But we usually only object to planning applications ourselves in exceptional circumstances. However this time, we’re throwing everything in. Back in October when we started our campaign, we identified hyperscale data centres as the biggest threat to Scotland’s countryside and landscapes and to our climate commitments, and we determined to fight each one through the planning system. This included a commitment to object to each one ourselves as well as supporting local communities to do so, while campaigning nationally for a moratorium until the proper policy and governance could be in place.

Communities have been throwing everything they have into this too. As well as organising locally and getting their heads around the planning system, they have been calling on their local MPs, MSPs and Councillors to recognise that this is much more than a local issue, and to ask them to support a moratorium. And they have done it much more effectively than any NGO could do. For these communities, the data centre proposals really are an existential issue – and the people who live there are the best at communicating this to elected politicians who also care deeply about their constituencies. 

As someone who has worked her whole career in environment and conservation organisations, the campaign is a remarkably broad church. Although APRS are coming at this as an environmental charity campaigning on issues of countryside, landscape and climate, we have seen people joining the campaign coming at this from very different starting points and making it their own: young people concerned about the impact of AI on their futures, those worrying about the rise of US big tech power and the potential threats to democracy, and we have also seen a complete spectrum of political opinion. 

We have been surprised at how much support the campaign has received from people across the political spectrum from left to right. This seems to mirror what is happening in the US with the reddest Republicans fighting data centres alongside Democrats and environmentalists.

Next week, as MSPs return to the Parliament,  this broad alliance of campaigners will be gathering outside Holyrood to call for a Moratorium. And community campaigners, in their letter today, have invited the  First Minister to meet with them. 

The announcements from the Minister for Public Finance, Hannah Mary Goodlad, last week, put in place the foundations for Government to announce a moratorium, while they take the time to produce guidance for local authorities, look at the impacts and put in place a proper strategic approach. However they also put in place the foundations for taking planning decisions away from local authorities and fast-tracking hyperscale data centres. The question is what happens now. This is the first key test for the Scottish Government this session, and many thousands of people across Scotland will be paying close attention to see what they decide to do.