The cloud has a postcode: who decides where Scotland’s data centres get built?

Blog by Sasha Hildyard, Content Officer

The cloud sounds weightless. Near Auchtertool in Fife, it looks rather more solid.

The proposal is for a 600MW data centre campus, with buildings up to 35 metres high and an electricity demand on the scale of a city. Its promoters say it could become the world’s second largest. Around 1,600 objections have been lodged.

On 3rd September, hundreds of people from about 15 local groups travelled to Holyrood. They were asking who decides what is built near their homes and whose interests count when a local application becomes part of a national industrial strategy.

Look narrowly and this is a Fife planning dispute. Step back and it is a struggle over political authority. The industry has arrived before its rules.

On 16th September, MSPs will debate Patrick Harvie’s call for a moratorium until Scotland has a national strategy and updated guidance. The motion cannot impose one, but it asks every party whether these are local decisions or national choices about land, energy and power.

When infrastructure becomes ordinary

New infrastructure has a habit of looking inevitable in retrospect. When the electricity grid was built, pylons marched across Britain, provoking fierce arguments about landscape and compulsory purchase. A century later, they are unlovely, familiar and indispensable. Familiarity does not mean every route was right.

Onshore wind offers a more recent lesson. Rules introduced in England in 2015 required projects to demonstrate community support, producing a de facto ban. The tests were loosened in 2023 and removed in July 2024. The turbines did not become quieter or prettier overnight. What changed was how much weight the planning system gave to local opposition.

Scotland’s data centre debate is becoming a contest over who gets to define the public interest.

Local decisions, national consequences

A data centre may sit within one council boundary, but its appetite for electricity, water and infrastructure does not stop there. National Planning Framework 4 includes qualifying “green data centres” within a national development, without defining “green”. Councillors must interpret a policy whose most important adjective comes without instructions, while Lanarkshire’s AI Growth Zone draws local decisions into a UK strategy.

Scotland is trying to govern the growth of an industry without a complete picture of its scale. PoliMonitor recorded 49 parliamentary interventions between January and 15th September 2026. Ariane Burgess MSP asked about capacity, cumulative effects and grid connections. The Scottish Government held no central applications dataset and had not estimated future electricity demand.

By June, the question had shifted from what the Government knew to who should decide. Gillian Mackay challenged First Minister John Swinney over council guidance. He said he would consider whether developments of this scale should remain local decisions. In July, the SNP’s National Council backed a moratorium, but ministers did not adopt one.

Green MSPs made 22 of the 49 interventions, pushing data centres from local planning rows onto the national agenda. Harvie’s motion now asks whether the system needs clearer guidance or more fundamental reform.

Ahead of the vote, ministers tightened the rules. From 17th September, all new data centre applications above 50MW will require an environmental impact assessment. This is a significant concession to campaigners, delivered without accepting their central demand for a pause.

The change ensures that the environmental effects of individual projects are examined. It does not tell Scotland how many data centres it needs, where they would best support the grid or how their cumulative demand should be managed. An assessment can test a proposal against the rules, but cannot supply the strategy those rules are missing.

Nor does it settle who should decide. Since 17th August, councils have had to notify ministers of applications above 50MW. Councils will continue to determine most applications, while ministers retain the power to intervene. Councils still hold the pen, but now write knowing ministers may take it from them.

Why location matters

The numbers make that uncertainty harder to defend. Ofgem says 315 data centre projects totalling 73GW hold places in Great Britain’s connection queue. Peak demand in 2025 was 45GW. Many will never be built, but speculation still occupies scarce capacity.

At Holyrood on 15th September, NESO’s Matthew Magill put Scotland’s pipeline at almost 30 projects totalling 9.7GW. He also said that locating 5GW appropriately could avoid up to £5 billion in network investment. The important word is “appropriately”.

Two otherwise identical data centres can have very different effects. One north of the B4 transmission boundary could use wind power that might otherwise be constrained. One south of it would not relieve the same pressure and could increase demand for other generation.

Yet developers choose where to propose, while councils decide one application at a time. The connection process cannot steer projects towards where their demand would be most useful. Scotland is making local decisions about national infrastructure without deciding where it should go.

Ministers appear to believe that mandatory assessments can address the immediate environmental risks, a moratorium would be too blunt and a national strategy can wait. Each position may be defensible on its own. Together, they do not yet amount to a coherent system.

The communities outside Holyrood have made it harder to discuss national ambition without confronting its local consequences.

The cloud has found its postcode. Whether it picked the right one, and who has the power to say otherwise, is now a political question.

This is a live article. It was last updated on 16th September 2026.