Edinburgh council calls for Scottish Government moratorium on 'green' data centres

Edinburgh council is to ask the Scottish Government to bring in a moratorium on new data centres amid growing concerns over their environmental impact.

And the council will also start work on its own definition of “green” data centres after the government said such developments were a national priority, but failed to set clear criteria.

The city’s planning committee voted 7-4 in favour of the twin move amid concerns about plans for new hyperscale AI data centres which typically use massive amounts of water and energy.

‘Green’ data centres have been classed as a national priority but the Scottish Government has not provided a definition. Picture: PA

An application to build a green data centre at the former RBS headquarters site at Edinburgh Park was refused by the council in February and is now under appeal. And a pre-application notice has been submitted for a site at Hermiston.

A report by officials warned that the authority itself could not ban applications for data centres and that a policy of blanket refusal was likely to be challenged in court and could leave the council having to pay costs.

But at the committee on Wednesday afternoon, Green councillors successfully proposed that instead the council should ask the government for a moratorium.

The Scottish Government’s designation of green data centres as national infrastructure requires councils to take that into account when they consider whether to grant permission - but the government has not provided any definition and has only said it will do so “by 2027”.

Officials advised against the council setting its own definition of “green”, saying any definition would have to be consulted on, involving considerable staff time, and that in the end it could prove abortive if the government did bring forward a definition.

However, Sarah Matthews, of the Hermiston Data Centre Campaign, which is fighting proposals for a hyperscale data centre on greenfield land near Heriot-Watt University and the City Bypass, told the committee the government’s timetable for a definition by 2027 was “too late”. The website of the developers Apatura suggested they would have begun construction by then, she said.

Ms Matthews said more than 2,000 people had signed the campaign’s petition. She said she worked in tech for a long time and traditional data centres, which used nothing like as much water and electricity as the hyperscale centres, had never been considered green.

She said: “When the ordinary person thinks of green they think of recycling, buying locally, cycling to work - they do not think of huge, black, noisy, meaningless boxes the size of 40 football pitches that distribute fine pollution particulates into the atmosphere.

"The Hermiston site will use 200MW of electricity, equivalent to 40,000 schools; and at worst our site will use enough water to drain the Union Canal every month.”

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Green planning spokesman Alex Staniforth said the council developing its own local definition for green data centres might “chivvy the Scottish Government along a bit”. He said: “Maybe they will realise that this is an important and pressing issue for councils.”

And fellow Green councillor Chas Booth said: “Policy has not kept pace with reality when it comes to these data centres.” He said ChatGPT did not exist when the relevant policy was published.

Planning convener Joan Griffiths said it was a “very complex” issue, but she argued against seeking a moratorium or producing a local definition. She said: “Going forward without agreement from the Scottish Government is something we need to think long and hard about. It is additional work for officers and it could be giving conflicting advice to our citizens - we say this is what we think about a definition and then the Scottish Government comes back with something totally different.”

Green, Lib Dem and SNP councillors voted in favour of calling for a moratorium and the council drawing up its own definition, while Labour and Conservative councillors voted against.