Community resistance is springing up across Scotland to AI data centres

Today, campaigns from Auchtertool, Hermiston, Larbert, Dunbar, the Gyle, Hunterston, Bishopriggs, Chapelhall, Longformacus/Lammermuirs and Hurlford gathered outside the Scottish Parliament this afternoon to demand a moratorium on hyperscale AI data centres. Across the world the proliferation of datacentres and resistance to AI is at the forefront of environmental litigation, from the US and UK to Chile to Ireland. Rachael Revesz reports for Bella Caledonia.

If brownfield sites could talk, they might tell us about the rise and fall of empires, and to learn from history.

At South Gyle in Edinburgh, there is a five-acre site, surrounded by trees. Two thousand Royal Bank of Scotland staff used to work here, at Drummond House, from the early 1990s. When CEO Fred Goodwin came along, he built his enormous HQ nearby at Gogarburn. He wanted an empire, and no ancient trees blocking the view. 

We know what happened to that bank, followed by the 2008 crisis and almost two decades of austerity. Thousands of RBS workers were laid off; others were eventually moved out of the South Gyle to Gogarburn in a huge consolidation exercise. Drummond House was demolished in 2023. All that is left of the site is rubble and a small security cabin.

Now, a developer called Shelborn Asset Management has lodged a planning application on this site for a 213 megawatt hyperscale AI data centre. This is despite growing concerns around these warehouses’ huge consumption of energy, water, their emission of pollution from on-site generators, and the constant noise. The data centre would, according to the council’s own analysis, employ just 39 people.

Around 24 sites in Scotland are being considered for hyperscale data centres, mostly across the central belt. A full list is updated by the indefatigable Dr Kat Jones of Action to Protect Rural Scotland (APRS). However, not all of these applications will go through. Shelborn’s application at the South Gyle was refused by Edinburgh Council in February on the basis that, as the committee convener said, it would “drive a horse and coaches” through local planning policy. The company has appealed and we await a decision.

Yet the council says one thing, while the Scottish and UK Governments are busily rolling out AI growth zones, citing inflated job numbers and lowering electricity prices to entice hyperscalers, while our own electricity bills will be going up from 1 July. The most recent national planning guidelines, National Planning Framework 4, mentions “green” data centres but does not define what green is. John Swinney recently said councils will have to make their own decisions on a case-by-case basis, and a green definition will arrive in 2027. But councils have to make a decision once a planning application is lodged within four months.

Before regulation (and the national grid) can catch up, we have been sold a narrative that AI is inevitable, and we must “lean in”, otherwise we will be left behind. 

But communities from Chapelhall to Auchertool are already being left behind. Residents and businesses close to these sites are not always notified of public consultation events: for example, the Busy Bees nursery across the road from the South Gyle site was not listed as a near neighbour. People are only given 21 days to raise official concerns or objections. (It would be 30 days if the developer was required to submit an Environmental Impact Assessment, but as widely reported, data centres have not been required to do so.) Communities will be left behind when the Scottish Government likely overturns any council refusal, as happens with salmon farms and the Flamingo Land Resort at Loch Lomond.

The good news is communities are not taking this lying down. People are organising, from Duns to Fife, and from Airdrie to Aberdeen. They are incredibly determined. In North Lanarkshire, the Woodhall, Faskine and Palacecraig Conservation Group won their fight against a huge development after 10 years, only to start their fight against DataVita almost immediately. In a local Facebook group, one man commented: “You realise they data centres don’t have a lot of workers. Also, our lecky bills will go through the roof – do the research into this load of bumf.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

The strong feeling was evident at a recent event in Edinburgh, organised by Global Justice Now. The workshop on data centre community resistance was so packed I had to eavesdrop from the corridor. During the panel that I chaired afterwards, US journalist Sarah Jaffe encouraged us not to dismiss the “power of the NIMBYs”, who object to these centres and to the industrialisation of their backyards. People care desperately about their local area, and large groups of engaged people is one of the best ways to put up a fight.

However, there are many more people who are against AI centres but do not or cannot speak out, due to their jobs, for example. One such woman messaged me privately to say she’s very worried about her son, who has respiratory problems and would be vulnerable to increased air pollution from on-site diesel or gas generators. Then there is the man who recently lost his wife and wants to move house, but he lives near to a proposed site and the value of his house has plummeted.

On the day I am writing this, people from all over Scotland are travelling to the Scottish Parliament to protest, and Green and SNP MSPs will ask tough questions to Gillian Martin, the Cabinet Secretary for Climate Action and Rural Affairs. Our lawmakers, representatives and planning officers – no matter how hard they are lobbied – can’t fail to acknowledge that community groups are becoming more organised, more informed, and more outraged.

Things are moving very fast, and it’s hard to keep up. Who knows what the next few years will look like, or even the next six months? Maybe the AI bubble will burst, and the intricate web of inter-AI company funding will finally shrivel up, sending our stock markets into freefall. The South Gyle site will remain empty. A visual reminder of the cowboys that continually try to profit from the public purse, and motivate us to fight even harder than before.