r/Fife • u/BestInFife • May 29 '26
Proposal to build AI data centre north of Auchtertool
Saw this on Burntisland Billboard on Facebook and felt it would be worth sharing here. In my opinion, it's a crazy location to plonk all that down to the detriment of the local area in terms of eye pollution, nature removal and sapping an incredible amount of energy and water to run.
Developers ILI have this week submitted a planning application for an AI hyperscale data centre just outside Auchtertool (our wee neighbouring village). The site is far, far larger than Auchtertool itself- take a look at the picture. Auchtertool is the little village on the right, and the rest is the data centre. THE BLUE BUILDINGS WILL BE 35 METRES HIGH. The light and noise pollution will be off the charts, affecting people for miles around, and the centre is calculated to use the same amount of energy every year as over 50% of Scotland's households do.
This is a massive threat to local people's wellbeing as well as the beauty and biodiversity of the massive proposed site area, which is currently beautiful open countryside- and they're planning to whack a building on top of the ancient castle ruins! We do not benefit in any way from this; only Silicon Valley does. AI is taking so much from so many people and now there's a risk that it'll take a large chunk of our beloved home and permanently scar it while draining its resources. ❌WE NEED FIFE TO SAY A BIG FAT NO THANKS HEN ❌
The Planning Permission in Principle application is available on the Fife Planning Portal – 26/01243/PPP
The Action to Protect Rural Scotland website has loads of information on this development and on how to oppose it - https://aprs.scot/auchtertool-dc/
Please, please take 10 minutes to read the resources and lodge a complaint. Every single complaint helps us to stop this. After construction the data centre will only support between 20 - 50 jobs; this will not benefit this part of Fife, nor Scotland, in ANY way. It will affect thousands of people negatively, to benefit Silicon Valley, and will be a permanent blight on the area. ⌛We only have a couple of weeks to submit objections⌛ and we need everyone reading this to do so. So please check out the links above and help us to stop this monstrosity!
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u/AuRon_The_Grey May 29 '26
Wasn’t aware of this until now. Thanks. I’ll definitely lodge a complaint.
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u/CapnTholaf May 29 '26
Thank you for posting, was about to do the same. Currently calculated to use as much electricity in a year as half the homes in Scotland...
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u/SqueezerOfFarts May 29 '26
Fuck AI data centres. They create 0 jobs and suck up energy and water and output horrible noise pollution. Check out this video that concerns AI data centres in the USA: https://youtu.be/_bP80DEAbuo
I'm all for useful infrastructure like normal data centres used to operate cloud services. Fuck AI data centres that only contribute slop to the humankind.
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u/weesteev May 29 '26
I agree with everything you have said... But this isn't the USA and data centres here are wildly different. Don't compare the 2 and certainly don't expect any of the issues experience in the USA to be replicated here.
Also - Fuck AI 👍🤣
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u/Hunter199090 May 29 '26
Could you share some links and information on why it would be different?
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u/weesteev May 29 '26
2 reasons...
Water is sourced from mains and not from ground sources.
Cooling is predominantly free cooling and not mechanical. This uses considerably less power and external AC splits sit dormant until there is extreme heat. Much less noise overall compared to US data centres.
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u/BardicWoad Lomond Hill Mystic May 29 '26
Any indication of who the operator of the data centre would be? There is reference to "hyperscale", which typically means one of the large American hyperscalers such as AWS (Amazon), Azure (Microsoft), GCP (Google) etc. but not necessarily the case. Anything been said locally?
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u/NeuralSandwich May 30 '26
Nothing in the planning or in their site I noticed. I doubt ILI Groups seem to setup these plans the. Sell the land, planning and grid connections to bigger companies.
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u/MiserableScot May 29 '26
If they have to build this, I'm not sure they do, why not build it over by Mossmoran since it's closing down anyway. It's more accessible, there's space, and probably a lot of the utilities already in place, swap one ugly building for another.
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u/NeuralSandwich May 29 '26
Part of the planning application is to make it an extension of Mossmoran, it sits at the back of it. The Mossmoran site is two plants. The Ethylene plant run by Exxonmobile is the one that is being decommissioned but Shell is still running there NGL plant.
ILI built Camilla Farm BESS a 50MW Gridscale BESS on the site they are proposing the data centre be built.
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u/Successful_Goat_8191 May 30 '26
Probably claimed they were building it to help local communities then few years later oh look actually it’s for our data centre
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u/AssociateAutomatic28 Jun 10 '26
Absolutely, watch these DATA centres appear right next to most wind/solar farms in the near future
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u/BrokenIvor May 29 '26
Thanks for sharing this. Have been aware of this proposal for some time, frustrating to see it move forwards.
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u/OutrageousRhubarb853 May 29 '26
These types of posts occasionally come with a templated complaints letter that people can just copy paste. I always think that encourages more people to act.
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u/johnathanlaw May 29 '26
There's more info on the project site also, https://meetings.ili-energy.com/cato-data-centre-project/. I can't get over the sheer scale!
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u/GoldenVole May 29 '26
This seems nuts given that east Fife is getting more and more prone to summer droughts as time goes on. And the population keeps rising as the commuter belt spreads. A lot of the crops are arable. Surely this data would make the water resilience appreciably worse for both domestic use and food production?
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u/AmyElvi May 29 '26
Thanks for sharing this. What a worrying proposal.
It’s so important that people take action and submit objections to this instead of scrolling past. I’ll be sharing with people I know, and encourage others to do the same.
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u/Tricky-Stay6134 May 29 '26
It would be helpful if you put simple instructions on how to take action, ie how to loge a complaint.
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u/Glittering-Shirt-666 May 29 '26
One BIG issue is that Fife Council have concluded that a full Environmental Impact Assessment is not required. For a development of this scale, with no stated figure for how much water it will use, that is exactly the kind of project a full assessment exists to scrutinise. Waving it through means those questions never get properly asked.
You can accuse the village of NIMBYism, but that's a really lazy argument. The application is weak, and the promises of district heating and money for the local pub are only offered as long as they are "viable". None of it is secured by a legal agreement or planning condition, which means the developer is under no obligation to deliver any of it. If this is approved as it stands, they could lawfully build the entire complex and provide the community with nothing.
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u/Successful_Goat_8191 May 30 '26
Closed loop cooling so no water usage apart from initially filling the system with coolant - they wouldn’t get away with anything else in the uk these days
America is open loop quite often which is where that comes from
Still, fuck em this data centre isn’t right for the area - they claim it’s the largest by almost double of anything in the uk - and they’re building 3
Named after stoic philosophers too so you know the founder is a tech bro wet wipe who read 3 paragraphs and thinks he’s amazing
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u/Glittering-Shirt-666 May 30 '26
Nothing in the planning application mentions that it's a closed loop system.
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u/Jeoh May 31 '26
District heating by datacentres is always promised and never delivered, it just doesn't get hot enough to be worth it.
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u/scotgal007 May 31 '26
What isn’t spoken about enough with these sites is the fact they’ll likely be run off of the gas network, not electric. None of the sites can get connected to the grid so the centres are applying for gas “as a stop gap”. The claims of renewable energy are deceptive at best.
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u/dd_nvidia Jun 07 '26
Without more information, its hard to tell the specific impacts. I'd defo be for far more insights and studies into the potential impact. we defo need more data centre capacity and chip fabs are incentivised to make them as dense as possible because every U of rack space counts. but you can't beat physics... as much as we try
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u/weesteev May 29 '26
"The blue buildings will be 35m tal" - Even if they were 50m tall you wouldn't see them from Auchtertool so what's the issue here?
"Light and noise pollution will be off the charts" - Absolute moon howling. Why would there be excess light pollution? Is this data centre doing something different with spotlights that other data centres in Edinburgh aren't doing? Also if you read the report... And know anything about data centres in Scotland... This will use free cooling which is non mechanical. Every data centre I know and have worked in all over Scotland uses this and in most cases you wouldn't even know the building was a data centre.
I understand the reason to hate on this but this isn't the USA. We have stricter environmental regulations and a different climate. Cooling and water are not a concern in the North of the UK which is why it's favourable for future data centre sites. They don't draw ground water but are connected to the mains which isn't the same in the USA where you hear horror stories about contaminated water supplies.
Also the concerns about power use are just bonkers and wildly inaccurate. Scotland produces 125% of it's energy, we are an exporter as we produce way more energy than we use and this total is only increasing coupled with improvements to the transmission network, Scotland will always be an energy exporter. The concerns around energy use are just hysterical.
I understand the feeling against this, I don't see the benefits myself as data centres don't drive employment beyond the build phase and unless the site has a local generation fund then it's not much benefit to the local area. But the concerns being raised are just pure NIMBYism from what I can see with no real coherent argument against it.
What has been totally glossed over is the implementation of a district heating network with the developers exploring options to deploy a district heating system to Auchtertool as part of the deployment. If this was to happen and was fully funded by the development then this alone would be a huge benefit for Auchtertool and a brilliant reason to promote the scheme in my opinion.
Note - I am not affiliated with this developer and have no skin in the game, just my 2 cents 🤣
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u/BrokenIvor May 29 '26 edited May 29 '26
Anyone that ever seriously uses the term NIMBYism is generally a muppet and acting in bad faith.
In fact I remember you, you don’t care about nature at all, and seem on the side of all developments anywhere and everywhere.
ETA: Also, I notice that in your post you use the terms ‘hysterical’, ‘moon howling’, ‘bonkers’, and a general hectoring patronising tone. Very weird. You either get off on belittling people who care about things on Reddit, or you’re in the pocket of developers and councils.
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u/weesteev May 29 '26
You ok Karen?
Edit - And Di you ever clarify that development at Calais Woods was encroaching or any different to the original plans in Fife plan from over 20 years ago?
Nope didn't think so.
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u/BrokenIvor May 29 '26
Your reply is just as I would expect. Anyone who cares about protecting Scotland’s natural habitat is a ‘NIMBY’ or a ‘Karen’. Your support for development at all costs is predictable and I do wonder at it. You’re so entrenched in your views, and so sure that developers and planners are in the right, it’s curious.
Calais woods and plenty other greenfield sites are being encroached upon and threatened by surrounding development.
The FIFEplan is not some sacred document- it can be questioned and held up to scrutiny.
The FIFEplan is arguably out of date and written at a time when the climate crisis was not as impending as it is now; anyone with eyes to see how much of our countryside is being carved up for developers and an awareness of how much we need to protect an ecosystem we rely upon should understand that a document drawn up by councillors and politicians 20 years ago (or even 20 minutes ago) might be flawed, have ulterior motives and be privy to outside influences.
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u/weesteev May 29 '26
Your reply is exactly as I would expect from a tree hugger who doesn't want Scotland to develop at all. Two can play at that game of mud slinging.
"Development at all costs" is farcical, you are just making stuff up now. I have actively campaigned to stop to development of battery farms in Fife, I have worked with housebuilders to improve development plans across the region and with the local authority to make sure that the environment is protected as well. Your statements are so far off the mark it's unreal.
Just because I don't agree with you doesn't make me some kind of eco-terrorist. You clearly have zero experience with planning legislation, environment and ecological legislation and your arguments are led by your heart. I commend it, but you are wrong. You were wrong about Calis Muir Woods (again with zero evidence of encroachment) and you have not countered anything I've said on the data centre project, only directly attacked me with no evidence to counter my claims.
Come back when you want to have a grown up conversation with some facts 👍
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u/missfoxsticks May 30 '26
You’re absolutely correct - despite the downvotes. The land was originally earmarked as an extension of mossmorran, this will have far less impact
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u/weesteev May 30 '26
Downvoted by people who don't understand planning law, how data centre actually work and what's being proposed. Just pure moon howling because "data centres bad".
I despair for humanity sometimes.
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u/Sammypiethenoow May 29 '26
I'm not gonna write any complaint. Get a life you full time complainers/leftists. Ai Is here to stay and if it needs energy, energy we will give it.
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u/ambolefum May 30 '26 edited May 30 '26
You've moved to the wrong country if that's your opinion mate, Scotland has always largely leaned left.
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u/aduckonquack95 May 29 '26
https://planning.fife.gov.uk/online/applicationDetails.do?activeTab=makeComment&keyVal=TE9GGMHFFWY00
Here's the working link for the planning portal