The promise was that a Scottish community would be transformed by massive investment and empowered to chase \u201cthe jobs of the future\u201d. Instead, local people in Lanarkshire fear they may have to sell their properties and lose green belt land because of the errors of a badly planned AI datacentre complex, even as those jobs and investments never arrive.<\/p>\n
Late last year, representatives of Oakes Energy<\/a> Services began to knock on doors in Newarthill, a village east of Glasgow. In letters reviewed by the Guardian, they invited residents to individual meetings. They told them about plans for a solar farm, say local people, and made offers: free solar panels, tree planting, or even cash for their properties.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a sweetener: don\u2019t oppose this and you\u2019ll be OK, kind of thing,\u201d said Diane Davidson, a resident. \u201cNone of these sweeteners are enforceable, there\u2019s nothing written down.\u201d<\/p>\n Two months later, the government chose Lanarkshire as a key site for the UK\u2019s AI plans, announcing a multibillion-pound development called an \u201cAI growth zone\u201d. The project is to be built by the US company CoreWeave, and DataVita, an arm of a Glasgow real-estate firm.<\/p>\n What will be built in Lanarkshire are AI datacentres: essentially, large buildings full of specialised silicon chips. The chips do the calculations that underpin AI models. All over the world, tech companies are ploughing hundreds of billions of dollars into building AI datacentres. They are doing this banking on the idea that AI will transform the global economy, and the datacentres will pay for themselves.<\/p>\n To be successful, they need to quickly put up giant infrastructure projects in communities such as Newarthill.<\/p>\n When the announcement came, the press release suggested a sprawling site \u2013 one that would bring \u201cdatacentres, supportive infrastructure, and a renewables park\u201d.<\/p>\n Promises came with this announcement: 3,400 new \u201chigh-value\u201d jobs and a community fund to inject \u201cup to \u00a3543m\u201d into local programmes over the next few years.<\/p>\n Construction under way beside the DataVita Chapel Hall datacentre. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod\/The Guardian<\/p>\n At first, the community was not concerned. \u201cThe datacentre itself is not much. It\u2019s just a big imposing building,\u201d said Davidson. Then they realised the project would require vast amounts of energy \u2013 and therefore vast amounts of land.<\/p>\n \u201cThe quantities it would need, it would definitely approach into our area,\u201d Davidson said. \u201cIt was like: oh, crikey. It was just growing arms and legs the more we looked into it.\u201d<\/p>\n They began to worry about Oakes Energy Services, and another company, Locogen, which recently submitted a planning application for a solar farm adjacent to the site on behalf of a larger international energy group.<\/p>\n A Guardian investigation has examined public plans for the AI growth zone in Lanarkshire, one key site in the government\u2019s ambitious push to bring massive AI development to communities across Britain. It finds that these plans appear to misrepresent the government\u2019s \u2013 and DataVita\u2019s \u2013 actual intentions for the development of the site.<\/p>\n In particular, the government and DataVita publicly said the site would be powered by huge quantities of \u201con-site\u201d renewable energy \u2013 until, when pressed by the Guardian, they admitted that the AI growth zone would actually connect to Britain\u2019s straining grid.<\/p>\n What remains unclear is how much renewable energy the site still plans to build. DataVita has said it will have 1GW of power, supplied by energy parks connected directly to its datacentres. This would require, by conservative estimates, 44 sq km of land near its site. At present, DataVita appears to have less than a 10th of this.<\/p>\n There is no apparent connection between Oakes Energy Services and DataVita but the appetite of both companies for energy parks has led Davidson and others to fear the land that will make up the difference will be theirs.<\/p>\n Across the UK, a promised AI boom is driving a speculative rush<\/a> as owners of industrial sites, investors and property developers try to cash in on promises of datacentre investment. This has led to hundreds of companies applying to build datacentres \u2013 and investors strategising on ways to turn empty land, or old industrial sites, into more productive assets.<\/p>\n Oakes Energy Services did not respond to a query from the Guardian. Locogen said it had nothing to do with DataVita, the developer of the AI growth zone, and was not involved in any pre-application consultations with local people. DataVita has said it has no commercial connection with Locogen or Oakes.<\/p>\n However, materials that DataVita submitted to the government about its plans to develop the site appear to suggest it does plan to use the surrounding area, solar farms or not, to power its datacentre. An audit done by the Scottish government, obtained under freedom of information (FoI) rules, says Datavita\u2019s proposal \u201cleverages the region\u2019s strength as a renewable energy hub by proposing that available, adjacent land at both sites is used to build renewable energy parks that will feed the hyperscalers and AI innovation parks\u201d.<\/p>\n DataVita told the Guardian that all proposals were subject to local and national planning legislation. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Local people have pressed Datavita and the energy companies about their development plans and come back empty-handed. In a meeting in April, representatives of the energy companies refused to answer when questioned directly about who their customer was, said Meghan Gallacher, a member of the Scottish parliament who represents the region.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t believe in relation to the planning proposal that the company has been honest in relation to how it\u2019s engaged with local residents,\u201d she said. \u201cThere has been, in my view, some doubts in relation to the information that\u2019s been forthcoming, the questions that they\u2019re willing to answer.\u201d<\/p>\n DataVita told the Guardian that all proposals were subject to local and national planning legislation through an open public process at every stage, and that it welcomed feedback and engagement throughout.<\/p>\n The Lanarkshire growth zone has reawakened old fears in Airdrie, just over four miles from Newarthill. For 10 years, local people fought a proposal to develop a community park on land owned by the daughters of the late Tory minister William Whitelaw.<\/p>\n In 2017, a group of prominent Scottish businesspeople announced plans to turn the site into a multimillion-pound luxury housing development called EuroPark. Among them were Graeme Souness, a former Scotland football player, and members of the Gillespie family, a local mining dynasty<\/a>.<\/p>\n double quotation markThe UK government figures given in their press release could be a hundred times bigger than the probable jobs that the datacentre will createAction to Protect Rural Scotland <\/p>\n Last June, said Davidson, the community felt they had won a victory: the site\u2019s plans were rebuffed<\/a> by local authorities, and then again on appeal<\/a> to the Scottish government. Now it feels that victory was temporary.<\/p>\n Ann Glen, a local historian and author, said: \u201cNow we\u2019re back here, and instead of this EuroPark, we have a datacentre.\u201d<\/p>\n Davidson said: \u201cEverybody is quite agitated and quite worried about it. Nobody is getting any benefit out of it. They are worried about their property values going down.\u201d<\/p>\n The potential upsides of the Lanarkshire development for the people of Airdrie are thinner than the government has announced. The Guardian understands there is no money currently in the \u00a3543m community fund; rather, this is planned to come from DataVita revenues, if it generates them.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the Scottish charity Action to Protect Rural Scotland<\/a> (APRS) filed an FoI request to the government to understand how it arrived at the figure of 3,400 jobs. It found that the figure came from industry estimates for another site \u2013 Cambois in Northumberland \u2013 multiplied to account for the fact that Lanarkshire is a larger site.<\/p>\n Ravenscraig steelworks in North Lanarkshire before its closure in 1992. The area has suffered since the decline of its coal and steel industries. Photograph: Mike Goldwater\/Alamy<\/p>\n