SCCS has joined APRS’s campaign against hyperscale data centres in Scotland – here is a letter written by their chair to the First Minister calling for a moratorium.

19 March 2025

(sent by email to firstminister@gov.scot)

Dear First Minister 

Stop Climate Chaos Scotland (SCCS) is Scotland’s climate coalition, with over 70 diverse members representing more than a million people across Scotland. We have long campaigned for the Scottish Government to deliver a just transition to a greener, fairer, healthier Scotland.

There have been some successes, most notably the shift away from fossil fuel power generation to renewables. However, future progress towards delivering your priority of tackling the climate emergency depends on reducing demand for energy and the use of renewable capacity for the electrification of heating, transport and industrial processes will be key.  

We are writing to set out our concerns about an unexpected development that would blow any chance of meeting our future carbon budgets – corporate pressure for new hyperscale data centres in Scotland, each requiring in excess of 200MW to operate. Your draft Climate Change Plan does not factor in their vast energy demands and contains no information on how the impact of new hyperscale data centres will be managed and mitigated, merely describing them as a “clean energy-intensive” industry.

One of the largest, proposed for Irvine, would require 1,000MW – the equivalent of 25% of Scotland’s peak electricity demand, and across Scotland more than 4,500MW of data centres are in the planning pipeline already. For perspective, Whitelees, the UK’s largest onshore wind farm, generates 539MW of electricity when running at maximum capacity. And Torness, due to close in 2028, will see 1,120MW of power go offline. 

This enormous additional pressure on the grid will, as the US experience shows, lead to significant increases to domestic electricity bills during the ongoing cost of living crisis and more frequent blackouts. 

These hyperscale projects are being developed to support the vast energy needs of AI and training the large language models (LLMs) of large US tech companies, entirely unlike the existing data centres in Scotland, those which provide vital back end support for the Scottish public sector, for businesses and for the public. The 11 data centres already operational in June 2024 had a total capacity of just 10MW, according to Scottish Enterprise figures. 

Compounding the climate impacts, hyperscale data centres require 24/7 connections and backup generation which is provided by gas or diesel generators. The proposals for one hyperscale data centre, recently rejected by City of Edinburgh Council, would have relied on diesel for backup, and, when in operation, would have polluted as much per hour as more than 100,000 cars idling.

These shortcomings are not even offset by substantial job creation. TechUK, looking at information about UK hyperscale sites, estimated employment levels of between 20 and 88 FTE roles per site. As the Wall Street Journal reported, “data centers have rightly earned a dismal reputation of creating the lowest number of jobs per square foot in their facilities.” 

Scotland’s National Planning Framework 4 contains “green data centres” as part of “National Development 12, Digital Fibre Network”. The meaning of “green” here appears not to be assessed in any way, and many data centre developers are not even being required to produce Environmental Impact Assessments. 

The answer to one PQ implies that a “green data centre” is one which uses renewable resources that could and should be used for decarbonising existing processes. And Scottish Ministers are not monitoring applications coming through the planning process (see S6W-42878, answered earlier this year). 

We are calling for an immediate moratorium on hyperscale data centres in Scotland while the Government does the following:

1. Commission and publish an analysis of the impact of hyperscale data centres on Scotland’s grid and route to net zero.
2. Produce a definition of what a green data centre is, and guidance to ensure they place no additional burden on the grid or on our climate objectives, and can operate without fossil fuel backup. 
3. Add hyperscale and AI data centres to Schedule 1 of the Environmental Impact Assessment Regulations energy requirements and include impacts on the climate in these assessments.
4. Declare the energy and water requirements of data centres, and back-up generation, at the pre-planning stage so the environmental impacts of the development are clear from the outset.

Our members and the public are greatly concerned about the impacts of hyperscale data centres on the climate, energy bills, and local communities. We urge you to consider the points raised above and would be grateful for a meeting with you to discuss the issues raised. 

Yours sincerely,

Mike Robinson

Chair, Stop Climate Chaos Scotland