Scotland faces a surge of AI data centres which use vast amounts of energy, and threaten climate targets and our landscapes. We are campaigning for a moratorium on giant data centres, strict environmental standards, and we support local communities challenging them through the planning system.
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Scotland is seeing a wave of planning applications for hyperscale AI data centres, each more than 100 times the size of existing ones and with the energy demand of an entire city. They take up a huge landarea and 75% of applications are on green belt and farmland. Data Centres worldwide are putting electricity grids under strain, causing huge rises in energy bills and making climate targets impossible to meet, due to their constant energy demand and fossil fuel generation that supports them.
We have launched a campaign to challenge AI data centres. As an environmental charity we are very concerned about the impacts they will have on our climate targets, and on our countryside. Key to the campaign is bespoke support, advice and guidance to local groups campaigning via the planning system against data centres in their local areas, but we will also work to change policy and raise awareness through events and the media.
