Research firm Foxglove warned of ‘staggering’ level of resources required by 11 planned data centres across Scotland.
Artist rendition of the plans for one of the UK’s largest AI data centres on the site of the former Ravenscraig steelworks in Motherwell
Massive new data centres planned in Scotland to power the AI revolution would use up to three quarters of the country’s total electricity demand, a new study has claimed.
Research firm Foxglove, which campaigns for fair tech, found the “staggering” amount of power as well as water required by data centres “carries serious environmental risk” for Scotland.
Its study this month found 11 “hyperscale” data centres currently in the planning system could use up an astonishing 3000 megawatts of electricity supply once all operational.
That’s equivalent to nearly three times the output of Peterhead gas power station, the combined energy of Torness and Hunterston B nuclear power stations when both were still live, or the total generation capacity of all Scotland’s offshore wind farms.
Donald Campbell, advocacy director at Foxglove, said the “construction frenzy” was being driven by big tech giants amid a global £2.3trillion AI investment boom.
Data centres need vast amounts of electricity
He told the Sunday Mail: “These incredibly power-hungry data centres will largely be benefiting profits of big tech rather than public need on the whole.
“Each one is using electricity which is equal to, or sometimes multiple times, the total number of houses in Edinburgh. It’s an astonishingly vast amount of electricity they demand.
“That will put a lot of strain on energy supply, particularly when we’re trying to transition to a lower-carbon society.
“That extra strain on the grid can also make it harder to build new housing, because new housing needs grid connections as well.
“And they produce a huge amount of heat. Some of these data centres may use water cooling systems for their computing equipment which can have a very big demand on the local water environment.”
The UK previously got in on the AI explosion with a £150billion “Tech Prosperity Deal” announced by Keir Starmer and Donald Trump during the US president’s state visit in September.
The deal was put on ice last week, however, amid a row over trade barriers. But a planned £31billion investment by tech giants Microsoft, Google and Nvidia in the UK is thought to be unaffected.
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Earlier this year, US chip giant Nvidia became the world’s first $5trillion (£3.8trn) company – but it comes amid stock market fears of an AI “bubble” that could later crash the economy.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang joined Trump on his UK visit where he warned Britain would need to build more carbon-emitting gas power plants to meet data centre demand.
Campbell added: “It is worrying that this vast expansion of polluting data centres is receiving the backing of both the Scottish and UK Governments, with little apparent thought for the consequences.”
Foxglove’s research found data centres currently in the planning system will demand between 2000-3000 megawatts (MW) of electricity supply. Scotland’s current peak demand in winter is 4000MW.
Scotland’s existing data centres include the ARCHER2 supercomputing facility at Edinburgh University.
Also in the pipeline are planned sites at South Gyle and Wester Hermiston in Edinburgh and a huge 550MW data centre at the former Ravenscraig steelworks in Lanarkshire.
Other areas earmarked for data centres are the Borders, Ayrshire, Fife, West Lothian and East Dunbartonshire.