Scottish Parliament passes AI data centre pause
On Wednesday evening, Scottish Parliament passed a pause on new data centres in Scotland! This is not as good as it could be. There have been calls for a full data centre moratorium for months. This is as watered down as they can get away with. The Scottish Greens brought the motion. The SNP and…
On Wednesday evening, Scottish Parliament passed a pause on new data centres in Scotland! This is not as good as it could be. There have been calls for a full data centre moratorium for months. This is as watered down as they can get away with. The Scottish Greens brought the motion. The SNP and Labour wouldn’t support a full moratorium, but they did agree a pause until planning guidance is updated, and new hyperscale data centres will need “robust environmental impact assessments.” This pause is for up to a year from now. [Scottish Parliament] The Scottish government also rushed out new rules, on the day of the moratorium debate, that data centres over 50 megawatts will need to submit environmental impact assessments during planning. This applies to current plans as well as new ones. [Scottish Government] This might all sound a bit nonspecific and waffly. That’s because the SNP wants to put in something that works for their very good friends in the data centre lobby. Power use is a bit of an issue. Just planned data centre applications add up to at least 9 gigawatts. For comparison, Scotland’s peak power draw is 4 gigawatts. [ERCS, PDF; ARPS] But there’s also the public opposition to new data centres. YouGov found in May: [National] 48% of Scots strongly or somewhat opposed the idea of having a data centre in their area. Meanwhile just 22% somewhat or strongly supported that. Anti-data-centre campaigners have already said they won’t stop until a full moratorium is in place. [Independent] Video — PodcastSource: Pivot to AI — Published — Category: Business