Scottish ministers are being challenged to deliver on their commitment to pause applications for new hyperscale data centres ahead of the latest planning guidance being produced.
Kat Jones, director of the campaigning charity Action to Protect Rural Scotland, insisted it is time for the stance – agreed by Holyrood in a vote last month – to be implemented.
She spoke ahead of MSPs discussing a petition calling for a moratorium on such centres being given the go ahead until the Government has carried out a “thorough assessment” of the impact such sites have on communities, greenhouse gas emissions, land and water resources, and the electricity grid.
Parliament has asked for action, the communities suffering anxiety and stress have asked for action, and ministers have promised to act. It’s time to deliver
More than 25,000 people have signed the petition, making it the largest so far to come before MSPs in this Holyrood session.
It has been submitted by Dr Jones, and MSPs on the Public Petitions Committee agreed to refer it to the Social Justice, Housing and Local Government Committee, which deals with planning matters.
Dr Jones said: “It’s time for Parliament’s decision last month to pause these applications to be implemented.
“It’s no good letting communities and local authorities continue to struggle with complicated and badly written applications when they will all have to be reconsidered in the light of the strategy and guidance ministers have promised to deliver.
“This is at heart a planning issue, much as these projects appear incompatible with decarbonisation and protecting the public from soaring energy bills.
“Parliament has asked for action, the communities suffering anxiety and stress have asked for action, and ministers have promised to act. It’s time to deliver.”
The petition was raised as 15 community groups concerned about planned data centres in their area wrote to public finance minister Hannah Mary Goodlad.
The letter, signed by groups from Chapelcross in the south-west of Scotland to Aberdeen, calls on the Scottish Government to set out how the pause should work, given live applications remain in the planning system.
Ms Goodlad has already pledged new guidance will be ready before Christmas for councils to use when considering if data centres should be granted planning permission.
But the petition before MSPs calls for a “pause on hyperscale data centres until the Government carries out a thorough assessment of their impacts”.
Highlighting growing concerns about such sites, it states: “Hyperscale data centres in our planning system would more than double Scotland’s current peak energy demand.
“Since they use energy 24/7 this will badly impact our climate targets as they cannot be powered by renewables alone and it is likely that they will require onsite gas generation if the grid cannot support them.
“They also require diesel or gas back-up generators which produce air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.”
Michael Maciocia, from the Say No To Larbert Data Centre campaign, said the groups had written to Ms Goodlad “to ask that she bring the representatives of the many communities into discussions about the guidance she is preparing”.
He added: “After months of work scrutinising these applications and learning about hyperscale data centres in general, it is the communities who are the experts and we want to offer our unique perspective and insight to those preparing the strategy and the guidance.”
Gordon Fraser, from the West Edinburgh Community Campaign Against AI Data Centres, claimed: “Developers are treating Scotland’s planning system and our green belt as a speculative playground, and local communities are fighting back.”
Mr Fraser said that by submitting applications for planning permission in principle, “developers are deliberately hiding the devastating realities of massive diesel generator and regional grid drain from the public”.
He added: “It is a cynical tactic designed to bypass environmental scrutiny.
“The Scottish Government must enforce its own parliamentary mandate, legally freeze these applications, and ensure that communities are treated as central stakeholders.
“Permanently concreting over prime agricultural land for automated server warehouses is not green growth. It is environmental vandalism.”
Ms Goodlad said: “I have directed that planning authorities be required to notify ministers of new data centre applications and have published a planning direction which requires an environmental impact assessment to be submitted during planning for all new data centres with a power capacity exceeding 50 megawatts.
“Data centres represent a rapidly emerging sector and planning has an important role to play in considering applications, harnessing economic opportunities, and finding solutions which align with our climate goals.
“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.”