Proposals to use green belt land in three sites across the Central belt.
The plans are controversial for two main reasons: they use green belt land, potentially disturbing wildlife habitats and the local area's amenity; and they may bring few benefits to Scotland compared to the huge amounts of energy, land and water they will consume.
PLANS to build artificial intelligence data centres on greenbelt land across Scotland can be revealed by the Sunday National.
Developers are eyeing three protected sites for the energy-hungry supercomputer hubs, according to new research by Action to Protect Rural Scotland (APRS) shared exclusively with this paper.
Apatura has put forward plans for a data centre on the green belt outside Hamilton, South Lanarkshire.
Council planners have said the proposals need to undergo an environmental impact assessment because they “could potentially result in an irreversible significant impact on the existing landscape character of the area”.
The proposed 45-hectare development would sit alongside a new battery farm in Muttonhole Road at Haspielaw Farm, which is considered “undeveloped agricultural land”.
However, planners determined that the plans had the potential to have a “significant adverse visual impact on the established rural environment”, such is the size of the site.