Executive Summary

• Scotland’s data centre boom is facing mounting opposition, with hundreds of protesters gathering at Holyrood last week.
• Scottish Government is actively positioning Scotland as a destination for green data centre and AI investment.
• Why is Scotland is attracting data centre investment, why are campaigners are pushing back, and who’s going to win?

 

Last week, hundreds of data centre objectors staged a protest outside Scotland’s Parliament at Holyrood. There are currently 15 data centres north of the border, according to The Scotsman, and up to 24 in planning – including one in Fife, which could be the second largest in the world. The Guardian reported the protest as the biggest yet in the country’s data centre ‘gold rush’, as campaigners question the true economic benefits of the planned developments versus the environmental impact.

The protest follows a petition filed on behalf of Action to Protect Rural Scotland, which calls for a ‘Moratorium on planning applications for all hyperscale data centres until their environmental impacts have been fully assessed’. At time of writing, the petition has more than 24,500 signatures and is officially under consideration. 

What’s so special about Scotland?

Scotland’s data centre boom hasn’t happened by accident. The country wasn’t picked at random. Using Scotland as a data centre hub has been part of the government strategy for several years. 

In March 2021, Scottish Government published its ‘digital ambition’ as part of the country’s ‘green economic recovery’ post Covid. This strategy set four pillars which outlined a plan that ‘with the appropriate support, interventions and investment, Scotland can generate significant new economic growth from data storage, management and innovation’.

And this was followed by Scotland’s Artificial Intelligence strategy 2026-2031 – a plan for the next five years that draws on the country’s history of discovery and development. 

Right off the bat, the two authors Kate Forbes MSP (Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Economy and Gaelic) and Richard Lochhead MSP (Minister for Business and Employment) address the need for open communication. 

‘People are rightly concerned about transparency, fairness, the impact on jobs and the accelerating pace of change’, they say. ‘Scotland’s response is to address these issues openly and responsibly, demonstrating that progress and safeguards can go hand in hand.’

Yet protesters don’t agree that these issues are being addressed openly enough, if at all.

Why can’t we keep Scotland ‘special’?

Scotland isn’t just attracting data centres because developers see an opportunity – the government has actively positioned the country as a destination for green data centre investment.

Renewable energy, plentiful space and access to water are all part of Scotland’s appeal to data centre developers. But those same resources are at the heart of the opposition, with campaigners questioning whether they should be used to support a rapidly expanding data centre industry.

Action to Protect Rural Scotland (APRS), which is behind the petition, says the impact of all these projects on Scotland’s energy, water, land and local communities hasn’t been properly looked at. The campaign group is calling for a moratorium on new hyperscale data centres until there is a clearer picture of what that impact could be.

That concern is perhaps easiest to see in Fife, where a proposed 600MW data centre at Auchtertool has attracted more than 1,600 objections. The project has been billed as the second-largest data centre in the world, and Scottish ministers have now required an Environmental Impact Assessment before the planning application can move forward.

But what about the jobs?

You can’t have an argument about the benefits of data centre development without bringing in the economic debate and employment.

The Scottish Government says the Lanarkshire AI Growth Zone alone is backed by more than £8bn of private investment and is expected to create more than 3,400 jobs, including 800 high-value AI and digital infrastructure roles.

And as Ross Greer, co-leader of the Scottish Greens, acknowledged at the protest: “If we want to have the internet, we need datacentres and Scotland already has plenty of them.” His argument is not that Scotland doesn’t need data centres, but that this doesn’t necessarily mean it needs the scale of hyperscale developments now being proposed.

There is, however, a bigger question around those promised economic benefits. How many of those jobs will actually be in the data centres themselves? How many will be temporary? And how much of the wider economic impact is tied to construction and other indirect benefits?

We’ve started digging into that question, and there’s more on the jobs behind Scotland’s data centre boom next week.

What happens next?

Scotland already has a data centre industry. What has changed is the scale of what is now being proposed. The government sees an opportunity to turn Scotland’s renewable energy and infrastructure into investment, jobs and a bigger role in the AI economy. Protesters see the same resources being put under pressure. So, how does this play out?

1. The boom rolls on

The government sticks to its plans, projects continue through the planning process and Scotland gets the data centre investment it has spent years trying to attract. The protests may slow things down, but ultimately don’t stop the expansion.

2. The protesters win

Holyrood gives in to pressure and introduces a moratorium, meaning new hyperscale projects are put on hold while their environmental impact is looked at more closely. Some projects could be delayed, scaled back or even abandoned.

3. Nobody really wins

This might be the most interesting outcome. The data centres still get built, but the protests force the government to change the rules around them. More scrutiny around energy, water, land and environmental impact. Tougher requirements around what can actually be called a ‘green’ data centre. And perhaps more expected from developers when it comes to the communities hosting them.

The reality is, Scotland’s data centre boom probably isn’t going to disappear overnight. There is too much investment, too much political backing and too much demand for the infrastructure behind AI.

But that doesn’t mean the protesters can’t have an impact.

If the result is a slower, more carefully scrutinised and more tightly regulated data centre industry, they may have achieved something even without stopping the boom.

So, can protesters really stop Scotland’s data centre boom?

Let’s find out.