Petition Text
Moratorium on planning applications for all hyperscale data centres until their environmental impacts have been fully assessed
Calling on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to introduce a moratorium to prohibit planning permission from being granted for any hyperscale data centres, until it has carried out a thorough assessment of their impacts on Scotland’s communities, greenhouse gas emissions, land and water resources and electricity grid; until regulations are modified to require all hyperscale AI data centres to carry out an Environmental Impact Assessment; and until the Scottish Government puts in place guidance on hyperscale AI data centres and ‘green data centres’.
Scottish Government’s initial response to the petition
APRS Response
Petition PE2233 makes four related asks of the Scottish Government:
- for Ministers to introduce a moratorium to prohibit planning permission from being granted for any hyperscale data centres
- for that moratorium to stand “until [the Scottish Government] has carried out a thorough assessment of their impacts on Scotland’s communities, greenhouse gas emissions, land and water resources and electricity grid”
- and “until regulations are modified to require all hyperscale AI data centres to carry out an Environmental Impact Assessment”
- and finally “until the Scottish Government puts in place guidance on hyperscale AI data centres and ‘green data centres’”.
The Committee will be aware that, since this Petition was lodged, the Scottish Government has made a Planning Direction that all data centres over 50MW will require an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) (point 3 above).
And also that the other points were all debated as part of a debate on a motion from Patrick Harvie MSP on 16 September 2026. Point 4 was within the Government amendment S7M-01177.5 to the motion. The wording for this section was: “welcomes the Scottish Government’s commitment to the swift creation of national planning and spatial guidance by the end of the year for the determination of conditions, under which data centre development should be permitted”.
We therefore do not require further help from the Committee on points 3 and 4.
However, it would be useful to have the Committee’s assistance on points 1 and 2, which we feel have been only partially addressed by the motion as amended which was passed on 16 September.
Firstly, there needs to be clarity from the Scottish Government on how they intend to put in place the pause on planning decisions until the ‘national planning and spatial guidance’ referred to in their amendment is produced. The pause was contained within the text of amendment S7M-01177.3 from Daniel Johnson MSP (agreed by the Scottish Parliament) which “calls on the Scottish Government to report back to Parliament on the development of national planning guidance by the end of the current calendar year and to publish this guidance in full within 12 months, and believes that no decisions on planning or consenting in relation to such applications should be made until this has been completed”.
The Scottish Government’s 1 September 2026 written submission to the Committee states that, “It is not clear that such a moratorium [as called for in our Petition] would be lawful”.
We disagree – Environmental Rights Centre Scotland (ERCS) has advised us that it is clear that the Scottish Government could lawfully introduce a moratorium: Page 2 of the 16 September 2026 SPICE briefing to the Committee supports our position. SPICE helpfully reminded the Committee that the Scottish Government maintains ‘no support’ policies for new coal mines and fracking developments. SPICE explained that, “There is no obvious barrier to the introduction of a policy of no support for new data centres and similar administrative arrangements for the handling of such applications as apply to coal mines and fracking developments”.
We believe that the Scottish Government could maintain a position of “no support” for hyperscale data centres until the national planning and spatial guidance is published.
Point 2 on that list also remains unresolved. Members (including Scottish Ministers) voted for this wording in the Labour amendment:
“calls on the Scottish Government to bring forward […] robust environmental standards and assessments, to inform national and local decision-making on current and potential hyperscale data centre planning applications; notes that such guidance must provide clarity on spatial, community and social impacts of any such developments and that decisions must be based on community consent; agrees that consideration must be given to implementing community benefit schemes and adjusting the non-domestic rates regime or other tax measures to ensure that economic benefits are accrued by communities in which such data centres are sited; calls on the Scottish Government to report back to Parliament on the development of national planning guidance by the end of the current calendar year and to publish this guidance in full within 12 months.”
This text is essentially a more full expression of point 2 in this petition (see section below), but we do not yet have clarity from the Government on how they will deliver that list of outputs. And, importantly, given the evident public interest in this issue, how communities and civil society will be able to input their expertise into this process of creating the guidance, as well as contributing to the scope of that guidance.
It is also clear that any national planning and spatial guidance, plus assessment of the cumulative impact on grid and decarbonisation, and the various other pieces of work committed to, would need to be consulted on via a standard 12 week public consultation. The statement from the Scottish Government that they will have all this work completed by the end of the year and that planning decisions will be paused only until Christmas seems implausible and in need of scrutiny.
You will be aware that other committees are already considering this, and related issues, notably the Economy, Tourism & Energy Committee and the Climate Action Committee, so it might seem sensible to refer these elements to one or other of those. However, at its heart this is a planning question, albeit one with significant impacts on energy and climate policy. We would therefore hope that you might consider referring these elements to your colleagues on the Social Justice, Housing and Local Government Committee for their consideration.
It is clear the public interest on the issue of hyperscale AI data centres in general, and this petition, in particular, is significant, given the impact of these proposals on climate emissions, local planning policy, energy policy, and communities. And it gets to the heart of what the Government’s role is in ensuring community and public interest is effectively represented and heard when projects this controversial are proposed, and when no need case or assessment of public benefit has been made for them.