{"id":692895,"date":"2026-05-25T05:35:20","date_gmt":"2026-05-25T05:35:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/692895\/"},"modified":"2026-05-25T05:35:20","modified_gmt":"2026-05-25T05:35:20","slug":"scotlands-green-datacentres-policy-ignores-emissions-impact-of-ai-analysis-shows-scotland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/692895\/","title":{"rendered":"Scotland\u2019s \u2018green datacentres\u2019 policy ignores emissions impact of AI, analysis shows | Scotland"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Scottish government policy designed to encourage datacentres to build in Scotland<\/a> could lead to a massive volume of carbon emissions being ignored, according to an analysis by a Scottish charity.<\/p>\n

\u201cGreen datacentres\u201d are at the heart of Scotland\u2019s ambitions to develop economically. Enshrined in national policy<\/a>, they are part of a larger, UK-wide effort to attract big AI investment to Scotland.<\/p>\n

But Scotland appears to have no clear definition of what a \u201cgreen datacentre\u201d is. This means that current AI developments might call themselves \u201cgreen\u201d while their impact on the climate are ignored, according to Action to Protect Rural Scotland (APRS), an Edinburgh-based charity.<\/p>\n

The Green MSP Ariane Burgess, representing Highlands and Islands, said: \u201cWe urgently need transparency around what constitutes a \u2018green datacentre\u2019 and how their huge energy demands will be accommodated by our grid infrastructure.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo far, the answers we\u2019ve been getting out of the Scottish government have not provided any clarity,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

More than a dozen datacentres in Scotland are in the process of getting planning permission, including an AI growth zone in Lanarkshire, near Glasgow, which claims to be backed by \u00a38.2bn in private investment.<\/p>\n

Collectively, they stand to use roughly 6.2GW of power \u2013 one-and-a-half times more than the peak power use of all of Scotland in the winter.<\/p>\n

In April, Fintan Slye, the chief executive of the UK\u2019s National Energy System Operator (Neso), encouraged datacentre developers<\/a> to build in Scotland, where they could take advantage of its greater proportion of renewable energy, with fewer grid constraints. \u201cIf in the audience you have a big datacentre and you want to go to Scotland, please come talk to me, we will help you,\u201d Slye said<\/a> to a conference in London, reported by the Financial Times.<\/p>\n

APRS said that calling a datacentre project \u201cgreen\u201d and presenting it as aligned with Scotland\u2019s goals, even if it had significant emissions, could allow developers to receive favourable treatment from local authorities.<\/p>\n

A datacentre in Edinburgh this year appeared to have argued it was a \u201cgreen datacentre\u201d in submissions to local authorities, despite the fact it will include 200 diesel backup generators<\/a> \u2013 the equivalent of 100,000 idling cars, according to APRS.<\/p>\n

A planning committee appeared to have accepted this definition<\/a>, albeit while conceding there was no definition of \u201cgreen datacentres\u201d in Scotland\u2019s underlying policy, the National Planning Framework 4 (NPF4).<\/p>\n

The framework mentions<\/a> \u201cgreen datacentres\u201d as part of a larger national priority and says these will have an \u201coverall negligible impact on achieving greenhouse gas emission reduction targets\u201d.<\/p>\n

APRS found the underlying analysis used by NPF4 to reach this conclusion appeared to have been done in 2022, before the release of ChatGPT, and has not been updated since. At that time, analysts concluded that any increase in emissions caused by datacentre use would be counterbalanced by a decrease in emissions as people travelled less.<\/p>\n

This does not take into account the development of AI, or its potentially massive energy consumption.<\/p>\n

Kat Jones, the director of APRS, said: \u201cIt is pretty shocking to find out that the vast carbon footprint of hyperscale datacentres has been completely excluded from the greenhouse gas analysis for our planning framework.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last week, energy company representatives confirmed that more than 100 datacentre projects have requested gas connections<\/a>, indicating they plan to burn gas to power themselves. This is because of a years-long wait to connect to the strained National Grid.<\/p>\n

These gas connections raise an \u201cinteresting question\u201d for the UK\u2019s climate goals, officials have said.<\/p>\n

In a statement, a Scottish government spokesperson said: \u201cScotland has significant strengths as a location for green datacentres \u2013 abundant renewable energy, a highly skilled workforce and a resilient fibre backbone.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur aim is to secure commercial investment in datacentres that help drive economic growth while aligning with Scotland\u2019s net zero ambitions and delivering benefits for communities.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Scottish government policy designed to encourage datacentres to build in Scotland could lead to a massive volume…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":692896,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,254,255,64,63,105],"class_list":["post-692895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=692895"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692895\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/692896"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=692895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=692895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=692895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}