John Swinney faces calls to halt plans for “hyperscale” AI data centres amid fears they’ll cripple the National Grid and become one of Scotland’s biggest polluters.
It comes as we can reveal how a massive proposed site next to a sleepy Fife village would produce more air pollution than nearby Mossmorran gas plant.
The 600MW site in Auchtertool – the size of 100 football pitches – has been met by a storm of local anger after being proposed last month. Data centres need enormous amounts of energy and the site would require back-up bio diesel generators.
Even just routine testing of the generators would create more toxic pollution from nitrogen oxide gases than Shell’s nearby Fife Natural Gas Liquids plant at Mossmorran, according to calculations by the Sunday Mail and Action to Protect Rural Scotland (APRS).
Dr Kat Jones, APRS director, said: “To find out that this level of air pollution will be produced by this development is shocking. These projects bring a long list of concerns, including climate consequences, air pollution, loss of green space, and the impact on household energy bills.
“When you have a development that uses the energy of 600,000 homes and needs diesel back-up to keep it on 24/7, then even with routine testing they are going to breach safe air pollution limits.
View 3 ImagesDr Kat Jones of APRS said Scotland shouldn’t be data centre ‘dumping ground'(Image: HANDOUT)
“And when there is a power interruption and the generators are on emergency power it will be completely off the charts. The Scottish Government cannot allow these hyperscale AI data centres to be permitted for so many reasons, but surely the most important and critical is people’s health. We are calling on them to put in place an immediate moratorium.”
APRS estimates that if all hyperscale sites in the Scottish planning system went ahead, they would require 1.5 times more power than currently used by the whole of Scotland.
Last week, we told of another proposed 300MW data centre on the outskirts of Larbert, Stirlingshire, whose developers have been accused of “Olympic-level greenwashing”. Many data centres are privately funded by major investment firms and US tech giants including Google and Microsoft.
New research has warned that in Larbert – where developers, unlike for the Auchtertool site, had to produce an environmental impact assessment – the data centre will rely on a staggering 200 back-up diesel generators.
These generators require routine monthly testing to ensure they are in working order. It would turn the Larbert data centre – which would be close to homes and Forth Valley Hospital – into one of Scotland’s top 10 polluters.
Hazel McQueen, who lives right next to the proposed data centre, said: “The fact that these generators will be tested monthly is so concerning. This is a huge industrial development being proposed far too close to existing homes.
“We are all being asked to just accept potential impacts from noise, emissions and air quality without knowing what the long term effects could be.”
Tasha Marsden, who helped start the Say No to Larbert Data Centre campaign, added: “I have elderly family in Larbert and I am really concerned about the impacts the pollution from this data centre would have on them.
“Forth Valley Hospital is just across the roundabout and adjacent to the site is a care home which houses vulnerable residents.
“With such severe environmental, ecological and social impacts to the local area, it’s difficult to comprehend why this site was selected. More than 12,000 people will be directly impacted and only a handful were aware of the plans until they hit the headlines.”
The numbers and size of generators for the larger Fife facility haven’t been made public.
View 3 ImagesScottish Greens co-leader Ross Greer challenged Swinney to block data centres
Challenging Swinney to declare a moratorium on large data centres at FMQs last week, Scottish Greens co-leader Ross Greer said: “If all of the applications currently in the pipeline are approved, they will consume up to 6000 megawatts of power – that’s more than 1.5 times our entire national power use at peak time.
“That is obviously completely impossible but there currently isn’t any clear government strategy or guidance for councils on how to deal with these applications.
“They are completely different to the kind of data centres which already exist in Scotland. We’re not talking about socially and economically useful projects like the Edinburgh University supercomputer here.
“The Government’s policy is to support what they refer to as ‘green’ data centres, but this position was decided before ChatGPT even existed, before Elon Musk launched Grok – and before any of these hyperscale proposals came forward.”
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Swinney said the Scottish Government would “consider all emergency planning issues” but added: “The criteria for the consideration and the assessment of such developments is set out very clearly in planning policy.”
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