HUNDREDS of campaigners protested outside the Scottish Parliament against a boom in AI data centres across the country.
At Holyrood on Thursday, ahead of the first FMQs of the session after summer recess, campaigners turned out in their hundreds to call for a moratorium on planning applications to allow local communities time to research their impact.
Campaigners told The National at the event they are “very worried” about the lack of a temporary ban in John Swinney’s Programme for Government earlier this week.
There are at least 20 proposed AI data centres currently in the planning system across the country, with others expected to be imminent.
The boom has led to fierce local opposition. Alex Rhind, who lives near Hunterston, in North Ayrshire, where a hyperscale 500MW data centre is proposed said she has concerns about the impact on the local grid.
The Hunterston site – which would be on a 900-year old estate of a Scottish clan – would be one of the biggest in the world if given the go ahead.
“These data centers are going to come here, and they're going to absorb all the energy and investment that we have as a people put into this national grid,” Rhind said.
“We want to keep it for our own communities, and not give it to a bunch of people who are going to take it away to America, and just get rid of every possible benefit that we would have had, and probably land us with even bigger bills.”
Rhind added that she sees a moratorium as critically important, as it will allow communities to fully understand the impact on water resources, energy supply, the local environment and communities.
The moratorium is important, the complexity of this project is terrible.
“The story that these people [developers] are telling is really complicated,” she explained.
“It's taking us time to unravel how they're trying to tell us the story, which, if they get in quickly, as we know they will from America, the game is to get in, get the contract in, get the paperwork signed.
“If the contract and paperwork is signed, it's legally very difficult and very expensive to get rid of it. This is our best chance to lose this and get it sorted.”
Jo Richards, also part of the Reject Hunterston Data Centre campaign, added: “We do not need that number of data centres. It's not for our benefit. None of it is for our benefit.”
She added that as a current SNP voter, if the party doesn’t “start standing up to this”, she would reconsider who to vote for at the next election.
“This whole data centre thing is just crazy, obviously for the environment, these huge monstrosities, which, let's face it, in a few years' time, they could be redundant,” she said. “Technology is moving on really, really fast.”
Clare Gordon and Mary Ferrie are also opposing a data centre being built in part of the former Ravenscraig steelworks, which has been proposed as “one of the UK’s largest green AI data centres”.
Speaking at the protest, Gordon said she was “very disappointed” that there was no moratorium, but was heartened by the turnout at the protest.
“The message is slowly but surely getting out there finally,” she said.
“We would have hoped that that would have been a no-brainer, that that would be the sensible thing to do right now, and have that pause, answer the questions and the concerns that people genuinely have. But no, they don't seem to be doing that.
“We've already had this damage 20 odd years ago. The land is just recovering. We were promised leisure facilities and better amenities for health and well-being, and every single time, big tech just trumps health and well-being.”
Ferrie added that one part of the proposed development site is ancient woodland.
“We're trying to find out how much of that ancient woodland is going to be a data centre now, and it's a woodland that the local people use,” she explained.
“The children use it, local people. It's like a quiet place and a place to be. There's a river running through, and we don't know if we would lose access, or it's going to even be there.”
Jo McNamara and Jen Walker, from Dunbar, also said they had concerns about proposals for a site near to the town in East Lothian.
“I think the strongest card in our hand is the loss of agriculture because that's one of the things that should be protected in the national planning framework,” McNamara explained.
“I think they just see it as being a quick fix to an ailing economy, and we'll create some jobs and data sectors. We'll get some jobs and say – look, we've done that.
“Never mind that once those things have been constructed, those jobs disappear, and the number of jobs that remain, what kind of jobs they are.”
Walker added that she thought the Scottish Government’s response to the number of AI data centres had been “really slow”.
“I think it's just so obvious that they shouldn't do all these data centers in Scotland for all the different reasons to do with energy consumption etc,” she said.
“But they've just been really slow in coming up with any plans, and the ones that are in the pipeline at the moment are in a terrible position because the moratorium's not happening fast enough for them.
“So for Dunbar, from our point of view, it's good because they've not put the application in yet. “It’s quite early doors, but still, it's a worry. It could happen any day.”
