AI datacentres breach multiple planning and environmental regulations, despite being presented as ‘green’.
Our National Planning Framework has an overarching principle of climate and nature, and so the climate impacts of data centres are anything but inconsequential for decision making relating to NPF4. Where there is not sufficient information on water use and energy, climate and environmental impacts, the onus must be on the developer to provide these before any decisions can be made.
The Edinburgh decision has shifted the dial – it is clear that developments of such huge impacts, size and consequences will be properly scrutinised. Or at least they were in this case. It is vital that the Scottish Government make EIAs mandatory for data centres to ensure that they get properly scrutinised, that they consider the impacts of hyperscale data centres on Scotland’s electricity grid and climate commitments, and that they lay our an appropriately strict definition of what a ‘green data centre’ actually is.