The revelation about the vast amount of electricity the sites will consume has sparked concerns from environmental campaigners, but the Labour-run local authority will not require the firms behind the plans to set out their environmental impact. 

The council is considering plans for Shelborn Drummond Ltd, an offshoot of Shelborn Asset Management, to build a new AI data centre on the site of the former RBS headquarters in South Gyle, near Edinburgh Airport. This is expected to have a continuous supply of 213 megawatts (MW).

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Apatura has submitted preliminary documents to build a 200MW AI data centre at Currie, close to Heriot-Watt University. No planning application has been submitted.

Combined, these would require as much power as around 1.3 million homes. There are 253,222 households in the capital, according to the Edinburgh Health and Social Care Partnership.

Both have been “screened out” of the need to submit an environmental impact assessment.

Professor Ana Basiri, director of Glasgow University’s Centre for Data Science and AI, told the Sunday National: “Modelling the energy, water, and carbon footprint of AI is difficult, mostly due to a lack of transparent and standardised information on data centre environmental costs.”

She has previously made calls to improve companies’ reporting of their environmental impact, including in a report she co-authored for the Royal Academy of Engineering, which called on the UK Government to make this mandatory for companies.

The report said: “There is a unique opportunity at the present moment, while AI remains an emerging technology, to embed environmental sustainability as a key requirement for future systems and services.”

Professor Basiri said that while Scotland was “actually quite a good place for data centres” because the country’s “renewables-centric grid” was four to eight times less carbon intensive than the UK’s as a whole, there should still be concerns around “the reality that such facilities carry significant environmental costs wherever they are built”.

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Scotland’s data centres have a carbon footprint of between 2560 and 5156 Kilowatt hours (kWh) per capita, compared to 18,831-19,149 kWh for the UK as a whole, or 3967-8419 in France. These figures are equivalent to everyone driving between 18 and 145 extra kilometres in an average car per year, Professor Basiri’s research has found.

And as more AI data centres spring up, the overall carbon cost is likely to increase.

The Royal Academy of Engineering report laid out how AI data centres in the UK could be using as much as 35 Terawatt-hours of energy a year by 2050.

Greens MSP Maggie Chapman said: “These proposals must receive proper scrutiny and transparency about such developments, and their impacts must be improved. People have the right to know when there is a site on their doorstep guzzling energy and water, and governments need to factor this in before giving permission.

“There is an onus on the industry to drastically reduce the impact it is having on our planet.

“But if history shows us anything, it’s that we can’t trust the tech giants to act well of their own accord. We need robust regulations and impact assessments, and governments who are willing to say no to them when such decisions are required.”

Planning regulations mean that environmental impact assessments are not mandatory for AI data centres, and it is up to the local authority to decide if one is needed.

Action to Protect Rural Scotland (APRS), a pressure group, is campaigning to make environmental impact assessments mandatory for all new AI data centres.

Kat Jones, director of APRS, told the Sunday National it was “unbelievable” this was not already required and said that local authority decision makers were “not getting the full picture of the environmental impacts”.

A spokesperson for Edinburgh City Council said: “While we’re unable to comment on the specifics of live planning applications, environmental impacts are considered carefully as part of the decision-making process.”

A Scottish Government spokesperson said: “Planning authorities already have a responsibility to consider the environmental implications of developments which require planning permission. An environmental impact assessment is a means of drawing together, in a systematic way, an assessment of a project’s likely significant environmental effects.

“All proposed developments need to be considered on their own merits, in order to gauge whether the likely effects on the environment could be considered significant and therefore whether an environmental impact assessment would be required.”

Michael Hunter, head of commercial at Apatura, said: “Developers must provide transparent reporting of the full environmental impact of AI models, including embodied carbon and water use from manufacturing to disposal.

“Local councils and devolved governments have the authority to impose mandatory environmental impact assessments for all large data centre and AI factory developments to fully assess the local impact on energy security, water, and grid infrastructure.”

A UK Government spokesperson said: “AI and data centres have significant energy demands, which is why we are exploring bespoke options to provide support for the data centre industry. The work of our AI Energy Council – bringing together regulators, energy companies and tech firms – will explore how we can power new waves of opportunity in all parts of the country in a way which is responsible and sustainable.

“UK data centre operators are already implementing energy-efficient measures under a Climate Change Agreement, and our Clean Power Action Plan will support the development and growth of new energy intensive industries such as data centres.”

Shelborn Drummond Ltd was approached for comment.