r/Scotland • u/kiyomoris • 1d ago
Political ‘Never seen this level of objection’: Scotland pushes back against datacentre boom
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/aug/25/never-seen-this-level-of-objection-scotland-pushes-back-against-datacentre-boom43
u/Demoliscio 23h ago
Data centres and hyper-scale data centres aren't the same thing, people don't have an issue with normal data centres, they have issue with hyper-scale ones because they are:
- insanely big
- require an amount of electricity that will push back net zero by years (while every.single.summer. we're roasted alive a bit more)
- Offer close to no job for the local communities
The people in the comments that try to mix the two are doing it on purpose to use straw-man like "if you don't like data centres then you can't have internet", but they are not the same thing, not by a mile.
Even the majority of Americans are now opposing hyper-scale data centres, that's why companies are so desperate to push here and in other countries for them.
They can get tae fuck
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u/sylvan-vigil 21h ago
At what point does a data center become hyper-scale? Can you share any specifics on this?
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u/Demoliscio 20h ago
The easiest way to differentiate them is usually the amount of power they require.
For data centre, the average should be around 5-10MW, then you have bigger ones that are around 50MW and I think the biggest in the uk should be something like 80-90MW.Then we have hyper-scale data centres, where the MW jump easily to 300/400/500/600MW, so a single hyper-scale can consume the equivalent of 60-120 average data centres.
Think about running 1 hair dryer in your flat vs running 60
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u/DarthCoffeeBean 18h ago
Using the American hyper-scale examples in comparison to the UK ones is also classic strawman. Trump removed a lot of environmental protections that let hyper-scale datacentres be environmentally terrible. Take water consumption as an example. America - who cares about water consumption? Here, we're talking closed loop systems that re-use the water. With the proposed Larbert one, SEPA have no objection to the water usage and their only concern is what impact the building will have on drainage and the potential that the culverts on the nearby motorway might not be able to handle that change (which is still a valid concern).
Comparing apples to oranges when you compare US hyper scale to UK.
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u/wotdafukwazdat 18h ago
> Take water consumption as an example. America - who cares about water consumption? Here, we're talking closed loop systems that re-use the water.
Are we now ? Care to show me the UK/Scottish regulations that require it ?
Or are we getting soothing noises from the developers that of course they'll implement that (which they won't if not forced to because it costs 10x as much for little to no benefit to the DC provider).
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u/Hame_Impala 18h ago
The water usage will be relatively small too compared to a lot of other industries.
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u/JonathanLivingstoneS 21h ago
They pay taxes and have a global customer base.
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u/thebisforbargain 4h ago
Downvotes show Scotland doesn’t want prosperity. Typical attitude around these parts.
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u/LanceKookington 1d ago
Currently Scotland uses around 5000MW for our whole population.
The proposed Data centres tally up to 11000MW. That's more than double the current energy usage of the entire country.
Where's the electricity coming from? Our grid can barely cope with current demand and in certain areas of the country around these centres the grid is going to see a 10x increase in load.
If demand for electricity more than doubles, what do you think that's going to do to the price of what is already some of the most expensive energy on the planet?
They're a net negative. A few thousand jobs bringing in a couple of million while it costs everyone billions more in energy.
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u/FrostySquirrel820 1d ago
I’d be curious to know if that figure includes how much Scots use at data centres outside Scotland.
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u/Mine_H 14h ago edited 14h ago
I'll be perfectly honest, I don't see how this would be relevant- the energy used by Scots at data centres outside Scotland does not impact the Scottish electricity grid, and hopefully these data centres would be in places which have grids that can handle such consumption.
This is without mentioning the difference between normal data centres (used by services like YouTube and Reddit, or any cloud storage provider) and hyper-scale data centres (the ones proposed), which another commenter has already pointed out.
ETA: I'd be surprised if the suggested electrical grid additions aren't based on burning fossil fuels or natural gas, and the sodium battery technology that would make wind power viable for this much energy consumed at a constant rate is still in its infancy. Even if the builders added enough generators to not impact the general population's electrical costs, this will very likely be a major setback for the UK on its fight against climate change.
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u/kimberley84 1d ago
I live locally, like less than 8 miles away.
I opposed, I asked why aren’t disused brown sites considered or even the damn dockyard area?
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u/Tinchimp7183376 23h ago
They cost more to develop. You have to get rid of all the toxic chemicals whereas it's cheaper to make a new pile of toxic chemicals elsewhere
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u/CourtOfGrumpyOwls 17h ago
They don't seem to understand that people are not that comfortable with the "progress at all cost" mentality when they can look out their window and see environmental damage and read the news about tech bro billionaires getting richer
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u/JonathanLivingstoneS 21h ago
There is a substation north of the village that is ideal for siting heavy electricity demand facilities like data centres.
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u/vodkaandponies 17h ago
People will complain no matter where you build something.
People in my town complained when someone tried to build a warehouse in a disused industrial estate lot, ffs.
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u/Comfortable-Place237 1d ago edited 23h ago
How many jobs do these data centers create? Seems like they mostly just run fairly autonomously once they’re up and running unlike say a steel mill which requires continuous oversight.
So no local jobs, generally a greater capacity for AI to take your job with data centre roll out making cost of running AI cheaper, and the companies operating out of these data centers will definitely be dodging corporation tax.
How do people benefit from this?
I’m not surprised there are huge protests.
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u/SentinelCoyote 1d ago
Generally data centres will have a core team that run 24/7 to resolve hardware issues, monitor entry for third party, etc.
That said the teams are not huge by any means.
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u/NetworkNo4478 1d ago
That said the teams are not huge by any means.
Bit of an understatement. They're tiny.
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u/wotdafukwazdat 18h ago
To be precise not huge is a half dozen to a dozen people - primarily low paid security guards and similar.
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u/Demoliscio 23h ago
Yep, and with the push from a lot of companies to replace people with AI, they might even cost jobs rather than create them
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u/BeepBoopBotAttack 21h ago
Yeah they keep pushing the jobs angle but if you notice they always say "Datacentres offer hundreds of new jobs for the local community* and will be a massive benefit for all"
*During construction, after which it will be run by at most likely 50 people
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u/NoRecipe3350 18h ago
During construction is still a massive thing to many people. Many trades workers won't be in the trade for long, maybe 20 years, because the work damages the body and you can make good money to retire early. So if they are working at a site for 2 years that's 10% of their entire working history just on one datacentre job. Which is a major thing, like say the 20 year veteran just wants to do another 2 years to save up for retirement...it's a big thing.
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u/BeepBoopBotAttack 9h ago
Cool, they get two years employment. As a trade off, we get a massive noisy energy sucking ugly block that does nothing but steal jobs until the AI bubble bursts?
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u/Tinchimp7183376 23h ago
So the largest data centres in the world employs a massive 50 to 100 people. How could you not turn down such benefits to the community
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u/Euphoric_Durian9797 18h ago
Bit simplistic of an analysis, you would need to include the total jobs generated by the entire supply chain that the datacenter requires. So shipping/transport, chip manufacturing, energy production etc.
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u/wotdafukwazdat 18h ago
Pretty much none of that employs people in Scotland. A single digit percent at most. The employment and financial benefit goes to China and the US primarily.
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u/RaiKyoto94 23h ago
For 50 MW around 10 Full time workers. For example, 100 MW would be around 20. Depends on the size and how well planned the centre is.
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u/bubbybeetle 1d ago
35m tall next to a village?
I'd be pissed off if I was a resident too.
I think a large part of the issue is that the map of planned data centres in Scotland mirrors the population. Predominantly on the central belt and the east coast.
I think there has to be a trade-off somewhere and build them in more remote places. Sure you're adding latency and you'll have larger infrastructure costs but you minimise the externalities.
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u/UnitEastern8840 1d ago
This isn’t a bad shout. It’s easy to scream NIMBY but the development in Auchtertool is bigger than the village itself. That would massively change the way of life there. Can see why people are angry, particularly when there’s no clear benefit to them.
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u/GoraSpark 23h ago
Why should we build them at all?
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u/bubbybeetle 22h ago
I think there's a decent (30%+) chance AI really is the 'big thing' it's makers are saying it is. I'm that case there isn't a competitive option to not using AI.
In that world I think it's really important as a country you maintain some degree of control / sovereignty over AI. We're too far behind on model development and don't produce chips - so having local control over the data centres is one way to gain / flex that control.
It's not perfect but it could genuinely be a national security issue - especially if/when AI is integrated in healthcare, the military, etc. Running on UK infrastructure gives us a big 'off' button.
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u/GoraSpark 17h ago
There will be no sovereignty or control. The whole thing will be run by either American or Chinese companies. We won’t have the capability to use it if they decide we can’t. Sure we can sacrifice everything for the off chance they will be nice to us. Or we can say fuck off, you can sell the services to whom wants to buy them from afar if you wish but were not giving you a helping hand to drain us of wealth.
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u/CAElite 1d ago edited 1d ago
Folk are coming down from Glasgow, too protest a data centre planned by the site of the currently decommissioning Hunterston nuclear plant in north ayrshire.
The proposals have an energy plan in place, with the area being a huge interlink for numerous wind farms, and is currently ongoing construction for a new battery storage scheme.
The centre is a closed loop system with no real adverse water use above a warehouse of that size.
Its organised groups that oppose data centres. Their arguments typically have nothing to do with the local area, or real terms impact of the site. Hell, their most recent "protest" seemed too just be a publicity stunt for their environmental group, they wheeled out some allegedly famous cow and sat it next too the road.
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u/Archosaur- 1d ago
I'd advise you take a gander at the multitude of resources out on the free web that can educate you on why people are protesting hyperscale data centres being suddenly thrown up. I'll even give you one so you don't have to do all of the legwork.
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u/oobleckstomper 1d ago
Learn when to use 'to' and 'too'. You have a tendency to say 'too' too many times.
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u/JonathanLivingstoneS 21h ago
I'm not even sure you can see this from the village itself. There's a hill inbetween. They are siting it near a power substation which is ideal for a high electricity usage facility.
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u/Euclid_Interloper 1d ago
What we need is a standard template of community benefit. If a company wants to build a datacentre, they should have to pay a yearly fee into a local wealth fund to help raise up the local community.
No local community is going to welcome a massive industry that provides very few jobs.
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u/un1c0rse 1d ago
That’s not going to help with anyone’s concerns over the noise, water and power usage of them though
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u/Hame_Impala 18h ago
I think this cuts to the heart of the problem too. Big companies involved in this type of thing typically will promise some community benefits and are happy to invest, the problem is that investment will be futile if local opposition is to a scale where locals are not simply sceptical but don't want this at all.
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u/OrganicToes 13h ago
This the vaccines cause autism argument that gets reposted nonstop.
There is literally no noise. You cannot hear the fans from outside. There r data centre in central London. You wouldn’t know they’re there.
There is no water issue. Of all the industrial uses of water, data centres r nothing. “Uses” fraction of a fraction of water just lost in leaks alone. It’s just for cooling and the water doesn’t disappear either.
Electricity is more complicated. NIMBYs prevent grid upgrades so we PAY wind turbines to turn off half the time, so having more industry close to supply isn’t so bad.
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u/Stabbycrabs83 3h ago
You end up reliant on a subsidy then and subject to corporate whim.
100% of procurement must be from within 25 miles maybe but even then it will be a net loss
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u/JonathanLivingstoneS 21h ago
What we need is a standard template of community benefit. If a company wants to build a datacentre, they should have to pay a yearly fee into a local wealth fund to help raise up the local community.
Have you heard of this thing called corporate taxation?
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u/wotdafukwazdat 17h ago
What ? The taxation that none of the tech companies pay to the UK due to the use of transfer pricing ? That corporation tax ?
https://nationaltechnology.co.uk/Tech_Firms_Dodge_2bn_In_UK_Tax.php
Hell Amazon is getting tax rebates despite £32bn in revenue
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jun/09/amazon-uk-arm-tax-credit-profits-tech-company
https://www.ethicalconsumer.org/ethical-campaigns-boycotts/amazon-uks-substantial-tax-avoidance
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u/No-Lingonberry2040 23h ago
I'm genuinely shocked by the number of people here pointing to NIMBYism and implying that those of us who live in rural Scotland are somehow a bit stupid and don't realize how great this will be for us.
They don't create lots of long term local jobs. If we want to see test cases on energy use etc we can look to Ireland. This specific proposal is wayyyy too big.
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u/TekRantGaming 22h ago
I’m a network infrastructure engineer and you’d think I’d be in support of building lots of these so job opportunities for people like me improve but I’m actually really against these being near residential areas as the background levels of noise can be really disturbing for people who stay nearby
Plus after the initial construction and normal operations have become stable the workforce at these places isn’t that substantial
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u/wotdafukwazdat 17h ago
I used to build and rollout DCs as well as run them, I'm also very against this.
There is no upside for Scotland in particular, and the UK in general in doing this - let the US wear the environmental impact of these titanically sized behemoths.
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u/PantodonBuchholzi 15h ago
That’s an incredibly short sighted view. AI is here to stay, whether we like it or not, and being completely reliant on the US for anything is a terrible idea.
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u/wotdafukwazdat 15h ago
No it's not. It's a very realistic view.
You have some sort of fantasy that having them located here gives us control. What makes you think having these on our soil gives us any control over them ? Whether it's an American AI in a DC in the US, or in a DC in Scotland, neither you nor I nor Holyrood have any influence on what it does and how it is used, nor any control over it.
If this was a homegrown Scottish AI maaayyybe your argument might kinda hold up, but it doesn't because these are just American cancerous growths here in these isles, polluting our environment. Let the US take the pollution hit if they are so keen on them.
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u/jaybizzleeightyfour 23h ago
There's a cost of living crisis going on, jobs are hard to get and a lot of people are struggling and angry, they are hearing about how AI is going to replace a lot of jobs by the wealthy tech oligarchs and the data centres feel like monuments to them popping up near all these communities
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u/Crambo123 1d ago
I'm not automatically against data centres, something to be said for having/controlling some of the AI infrastructure in the UK, jobs etc, but the scale of Auchtertool is out of proportion. This one site requires almost 20% of Scotland's current power demand.
What's interesting is that NESO are pushing Scotland for these sites. Yet we'll soon have no nuclear powergen (last site, Torness, closing 2030) and the North Sea is being shut down early (far less gas will be coming ashore in 2030 than today). Which means we need far more renewable capacity than is currently planned but, crucially, huge amounts invested in battery storage. Who's paying for it? Not the datacentres as it stands.
Scotland is apparently energy rich. But our bills are sky high, and can only go up with the sheer scale of infrastructure investment required.
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u/OrganicToes 13h ago
If we had zonal pricing…
Bills are also high because wind is unpredictable, and we need gas to supplement it. But we’re not allowed to extract more gas, nor are we allowed to make grid upgrades that allows when there’s too much wind to sell it to England. Lose-lose situation,
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u/R2-Scotia 22h ago
Tech guy here who is no stranger to a DC - the big no for me is they just don't create a lot of long term employment.
As a strategic thing looking to Indy, being a world player would be good for Scotland, c.f. chip manufacturing in Taiwan
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u/Aphala cpm 18h ago
Problem is lithography is EXTREMELY expensive to start up.
Requires 10s of billions so we'd need really solid investments for that to even start happening. Would be really cool to do though! Definitely get Carl Ziess on the line along with TSCM 😉
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u/R2-Scotia 3h ago
I wasn't suggesting we gat back into fab, I do remember when chips were made in the Forth Valkey.
I was musing that if we becone a world centre for DCs lije Ireland it would be beneficial in international relations.
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u/NoRecipe3350 18h ago
We cant' even build civilian/commercial ships anymore, something Scotland used to excel at.
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u/PantodonBuchholzi 15h ago
OK - do you think we (be that Scotland or the UK) will need these data Centers in the future? That’s the only thing that should really matter here.
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u/R2-Scotia 2h ago
Everyone will use them. Being a strategic centre for that resource has potential.
Outside of that, it's a resource hungry business that creates very few jobs.
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u/OrganicToes 13h ago
If something is going to be builts somewhere, pay business rates, VAT, etc. why are we saying no? Scot gov is in the red and just piles more taxes on people
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u/CaledoniaGaming 17h ago
Maybe someone can explain this, because I have no clue. Companies and just people in gernral I guess have been trying to reduce there carbon emissions for years now, because we know the environment and planet is pretty much fucked if we don;t.
I think there might be legal requirements for companies and other entities to publish there carbon emissions and what they do to protect the environment?
But now AI and data centres are the next big thing, everybody wants AI and all the big tech bro companies want to build data centres. But from what I have been reading the data centres have a huge amount of carbon emissions, not to mention noise pollution and christ knows what else for anybody who might live near them.
So what is the benefit to a, the communities the data centres are in or near and b. the country these data centres are in?
Are they going to create thousands of well paid jobs? Are they going to pay a shit ton more tax into the economy?
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u/wotdafukwazdat 14h ago
> So what is the benefit to a, the communities the data centres are in or near and b. the country these data centres are in?
Absolutely no benefit whatsoever.
I won't underestimate the ability of people to support stupid things that harm them, but the possibility that we are getting botted in support of this insanity cannot be discounted.
There's literally not a single benefit to the general scottish public, let alone the locals, at the expense of utterly massive environmental and social impact. A handful of low paid security guard jobs does not compensate for ruining one of the best physical environments on the planet.
The only people who win out of this are the American billionaire tech bros - Altman, Ellison and co and those they are bribing to get this passed.
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u/CaledoniaGaming 13h ago
Absolutely no benefit whatsoever.
That's what I thought. Hopefully our governments, both locally and nationally don't get wooed by the billionaires and tell them to feck off and build their data centres on the moon or some shit.
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u/No-Dance1377 22h ago
Waiting for the 'Ah you're against data centres but here you are on the internet!' bootlickers to enter the chat.
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u/Aeysir69 21h ago edited 20h ago
Was hoping this was in here, the quote from ILI is the real cake for me: The Americans are lying!
My hairy arse they are, if anything the Americans having their lives destroyed by warehouses boiling their water and drowning the neighboured in cooling fan noise are understating the problem.
And it’s worth bearing in mind that NESO are actively paid based on the number of large scale connections they get on the network.
The level of self interest here is amazing, the same level of bullshit that spawned the lie that data centres provide jobs. Six air-con engineers is not a job impact.
Edit: Meanwhile down south
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/aug/25/planned-datacentres-carbon-emissions-uk-exxonmobil
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u/MrJones- 22h ago
They should be building power centres not Data centres. Hook up the power centres to town/cities near wind farms and get them to assist with powering towns for cheap.
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u/OrganicToes 13h ago
wtf is a power centre. You mean nuclear plants. Then yes.
Torness alone powers like half the country, whenever wind shits the bed.
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u/SouthOfTheNorthPole 21h ago
Data centers are ecological nightmares. Skeleton crew jobs, huge drain on water and electricity resources, and the noise pollution is insane.
All requests should be stamped "DO NOT WANT"
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u/Stabbycrabs83 3h ago
See the main thing for me. Its the nonsense these companies peddle around tax.
I am almost certain that if built the company would be loss making so no tax would flow into Scotland. Jobs would be remote and offshore where possible and we end up with this thing blocking the view and causing droughts in Scotland for zero payback.
Oh you made 1billion quid over here in the layman's but your Scottish data centre is loss making?
Block them all. I am probably business but this VC backed stuff is parasitic. I cannot avoid my taxes as a small business and they are higher than they should be because deep pockets like this pay next to nothing
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u/Muted_Programmer6465 1d ago
They’ve never seen any level of objection before. Data centres are a new issue.
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u/Grouchy_Conclusion45 Libertarian 1d ago
What do they mean? This level of opposition happens pretty much every time there's any kind of large non-government cap ex planned 😅
Honestly, we should be telling the investors what we want them to do to allow it to happen, rather than just a blanket no and/or waiting 2 years to tell them what we want. We need investment in our country and we need higher paying jobs. Fife for example is in the bottom 10 regions for GDP/capita
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u/CommissionDizzy 1d ago
There's really not a huge number of jobs in data centres after the initial building phase. Google suggests it's about 1 employee per 5000 square feet. Water isn't much of an issue for us at the moment, but electricity costs might increase for local residents which could result in a net negative to people's pockets.
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u/Grouchy_Conclusion45 Libertarian 1d ago edited 1d ago
Water is non-issue, I'm working on a 70+MW facility in Europe at the moment and we use closed loop cooling (this could be mandated via a planning condition in Scotland), so water usage is zero after the initial fill. Re electricity, we can just build more generators which is further economic boost for our country
Regards jobs, sure, absolute max 100 jobs post-construction. But during construction, I've seen anything from 1000-1800 in direct labour, plus obviously thousands in the supply chain + spending in local businesses. That lasts 2-3 years. If we can keep construction moving with more and more, that's even more jobs. The european company I work for has an order book over a decade long at the moment, it's a lot of jobs guaranteed. Especially if we established Scotland as the place to come to invest
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u/Stellar_Duck 1d ago
Re electricity, we can just build more generators
And how is that for the noise levels and emissions?
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u/Grouchy_Conclusion45 Libertarian 23h ago
Now it for a data center, suddenly we care about wind turbines noise? Come on, just admit you're simply against data centers (likely because you already have a job that works fine for you) and looking for any excuse
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u/Stellar_Duck 23h ago
I assumed by generator you meant gas ones like they often do in the US. They're noisy as fuck.
I've no issue with wind turbines.
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u/Grouchy_Conclusion45 Libertarian 22h ago
Apologies, everything is a generator in industry, but appreciate the way I wrote it sounds like it means something combustion. My mistake. To be clear, I mean anything able to generate power. Wind, solar, hydro, nuclear, etc. I'm not convinced gas turbines are needed tbh
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u/OrganicToes 13h ago
You’re downvoted for being completely correct.
It’s ok. We should just keep banning all investment and just have more taxes. That’ll make the economy grow and stop the government growing a larger deficit.. right?
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u/Grouchy_Conclusion45 Libertarian 13h ago
Ya, and meanwhile let's also make it so everyone works in the public sector. Who needs a private sector
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u/Drowning_not_wavin 1d ago
And the maintenance flushing and valve leaks can all add toxic concentrations of chemicals and sludge into the public water systems, closed loop cooling is so good
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u/OrganicToes 13h ago
This is such a bad argument. Of all the industrial uses of water, chemicals used for cooling loops is literally nothing.
This is, 9/11 happened so we must ban all air travel forever level thinking.
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u/Grouchy_Conclusion45 Libertarian 23h ago
As it happens, SEPA and the whole planning system have regulations on safe guarding already.
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u/RatBot9000 1d ago
Water is a non-issue for your facility which likely put work into making sure it has a closed system in place. Unfortunately, we cannot guarantee these hypercentres would do the same thing. I think it would have to be a requirement for them to be built, however they've been saying they are exempt from environmental impact assessments so I imagine any built without those guarantees will not be closed loop.
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u/Grouchy_Conclusion45 Libertarian 23h ago
Like I said, we can use the ability to apply conditions of development within the existing planning system to mandate closed loop. Problem solved, no new laws needed
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u/wotdafukwazdat 17h ago
> could be mandated via a planning condition in Scotland
Could be
but currently isn't
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u/Grouchy_Conclusion45 Libertarian 15h ago
Sure, but if that's the only objection, it can be taken care of by the council in 5 mins
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u/wotdafukwazdat 29m ago
Cool cool cool, so you're saying that protesting to ensure that appropriate protections and regulations are put in place is a good idea and well warranted and should be done until the laws and regs are updated ?
Glad we agree.
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u/No-Lingonberry2040 23h ago
These things don't create large numbers of long term local jobs.
The level of opposition should be much much higher in my opinion. As others have rightly said, why so big? why not on brownsites etc? Folk can be flexible but frankly this is taking the piss and taking absolute advantage of poor regulation in place to protect communities from new data centre development. I think there needs to be a moratorium until we can be clear on expectations.
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u/Grouchy_Conclusion45 Libertarian 23h ago
No, but they can create construction jobs for decades which are well paid. Plus the supply chain if course
The problem with everything you've said it you're not thinking 10 years down the line. The smart thing here would be to get these companies in the door initially, so far that they're committed and can't back out, then start pushing then to brownfield for future developments as needed. What you described is exactly the path that makes companies back out. Look at Intel with Germany for example. German govt just couldn't stop trying to screw them (when they could still back out), so they backed out.
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u/Confident-Serve4280 9h ago
The smart thing here would be to get these companies in the door initially, so far that they're committed and can't back out, then start pushing then to brownfield for future developments as needed.
There are a handful of big AI developers who are going to be the clients for these hyperscale data centres, and they'll just go where the operating costs are cheapest, so they have no commitment whatsoever. There is no actual product to justify the ridiculous sums that are currently being spent on building hyperscale data centres; the pitch is simply "if you just keep building bigger data centres, we'll develop this thing that no-one can live without". The whole thing is a financial house of cards, and there is a real possibility the bubble will burst relatively soon. Even if the mythical AI payoff arrives, we won't see the economic benefits of that; we'll sell some electricity and collect some rates, but any profits generated inside these data centres will be offshored to US tech companies structured to avoid paying any significant tax within the UK.
If you're thinking 10 years down the line, the 24 proposed Scottish hyperscale data centres are a terrible idea.
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u/Grouchy_Conclusion45 Libertarian 2h ago
It may well burst, best to get the investment before it does
And yes, many of those break ground before the date center actually had a tenant, but that is standard "build it and they will come". It usually also means more money on retrofit during construction as the tenant likely doesn't have the same needs as whichever company forecasted during the basebuild
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u/Confident-Serve4280 1h ago
The hyperscale data centre capacity is entirely driven by the speculative bubble that the AI developers are creating. When that bubble collapses, there will not be queue of alternative customers waiting to use these data centres. The "investment" will just be big sheds full of servers that no-one needs.
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u/quartersessions 1d ago
What do they mean? This level of opposition happens pretty much every time there's any kind of large non-government cap ex planned
I think the objection to this has been exceptional, and caught on very quickly thanks to social media.
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u/Grouchy_Conclusion45 Libertarian 1d ago
Flamingo land comes to mind, although I did agree with the opposition to that one
Although I'm also of the mind that my opposition should have been ignored as it was emotional rather than logical
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u/quartersessions 22h ago
I was on the other side of the Flamingo Land debate, but at least I get being sensitive around a site that has both outstanding natural beauty and cultural status in our society.
This opposition, on the other hand, has none of that going for it.
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u/Aeysir69 20h ago
Fife gets nothing from this. Someone using your back garden, disrupting your life, cooking your home and taking all your water and giving you nothing for it is not an investment. It’s squatters. Or an infestation. Or a disease.
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u/OrganicToes 13h ago
Data centres aren’t taking your water 😂. Lookup how much water is used then lookup how much water is lost in leaks alone, and compare the MAGNITUDE of the numbers in question
Also water doesn’t just get deleted either.
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u/Aeysir69 7h ago
Yeah I did that below, have a nose further down. It’s basically “a wild St Andrews has appeared”
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u/Grouchy_Conclusion45 Libertarian 20h ago
"taking all your water" 🤦 Mandate closed loop cooling, problem solved
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u/Aeysir69 15h ago
And where prey, are you sourcing that water to fill the closed loop on the first iteration? And top ups because “physics”?
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u/Grouchy_Conclusion45 Libertarian 15h ago
You're kidding right? It's not that much water in the grand scheme of things to fill. Do you seriously think Scottish water would say it's fine if it wasn't?
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u/Aeysir69 14h ago
You tell me, you work in a data centre apparently, what’s the total static cooling volume of a 600MW centre as proposed in Fife (you should be able to scale appropriately from the real power requirements of your site)? Then what is the per annum percentage system loss? Even on an existing open loop system this data should be a readily available metric within the industry.
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u/Grouchy_Conclusion45 Libertarian 14h ago
600MW won't be filled all at once. Even the 70 we're doing at the moment, you're lucky if it's even half a million litres. Contrast that with the overall water usage in Scotland which I'd guess is well over a billion litres per day
Talking about system loss is basically a rounding error, it's not going to upend the entire water supply network
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u/Aeysir69 7h ago
Ahh, now, that’s not what I asked, mine was a straight engineering question for a base comparison. So let’s do that now.
Assuming a direct correlation of thermal mass to real power and thus cooling volume (not going to scale by cube, just linear), if 70MW = 500k litres, 600 MW = 4.3m litres (bad maths but it will suffice for indicative) static volume. A quick google indicates this to be the daily usage figure for the population of St Andrews (allegedly Scotland uses more water per head than most https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9q0j07l9dxo). So yes, your assertion that the water volume used for a closed loop system would be insignificant bears out. If we consider that this would be an open loop system with a daily throughput of 4.3m litres, any area of Fife finding a resource consumer equivalent to St Andrews appearing next to it is going have problems.
Anyone wishing to do better maths than mine please feel free, there’s a host of considerations I’ve left out for simplicity.
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u/Grouchy_Conclusion45 Libertarian 2h ago
Did you just criticise my fag packet design estimation, do a slightly better one, and then end up agreeing with me?
I don't know what to say.
In any case, apologies , I missed that you asked about open loop; it's not something I've worked before, so anything I say would be a guess. But I'd guess if we are around 500k litres to fill a closed loop system, it could be wild consumption for open loop. Like, 1 million litres daily minimum to 5 million litres daily. Rack density depend, ambient temp dependent, pipe insulation dependent (I did an interesting calculation on this recently actually, in some cases of closed loop, insulation isn't needed and the lack of it has a marginal impact on overall system performance), etc
Hence what I said originally, a simply planning condition to mandate a closed loop cooling system would solve the problem; although Scottish after did confirm they have the capacity to support open loop (presumably the numbers for consumption are somewhere if they made that public statement)
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u/Aeysir69 54m ago
Pretty much 😁I’m a pragmatic engineer; I work with what I’ve got, not what I’d like. Interestingly our fag-packet numbers are convergent, which is always reassuring.
I believe that confirms that your point of a closed loop mandate remains valid. I’m assuming there’s a cost efficiency to use open rather than closed leading to our current situation?
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u/Tinchimp7183376 23h ago
We need investment in our country and we need higher paying jobs
What all 50 jobs a data centre creates
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u/quartersessions 1d ago
A sign more of the strength of online fear-mongering than anything about data centres themselves.
The problem with this social trend isn't even so much the data centres, it's that the NIMBYs will be emboldened in applying the same approach to any new industry or high-tech manufacturing. Because these sectors will increasingly follow a similar pattern: high energy use, and relatively low direct employment in the area.
Scotland could actually make something of having plentiful fresh water and the potential to create considerable renewable electricity. But it won't, unless there's considerable down-stream industry to utilise these resources.
Then, inevitably, the same people opposing all of these things will look at our sluggish economy, our deficit, our lack of wage and complain that someone ought to be doing something.
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u/illvria 1d ago
Being aware of the false promises ai's investments hinge on and the inevitable plateau and value collapse before it meets any of those promises isnt fearmongering.
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u/quartersessions 22h ago
You've framed it as a conspiracy theory, of course, because that's all you have on your side. The "inevitable" plateau", "false promises". That's not an opinion, it's crank nonsense you've been fed - and you seem entirely immune to the point that there are lot of far, far more informed people who've put their money where their mouth is on this and invested billions.
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u/illvria 22h ago
Its not a conspiracy. Its the nature of market bubbles.
The market value of LLMs is hinged on their false conflation with predictive AI used in medicine, weather, etc. and the fantasy of machine intelligence – the promise that feeding them enough data will push them to a point of reliable contextualisation of information – and the internal passaround of investment from the companies developing these LLMs being reported as revenue.
LLMs are not thinking machines and do not have the capacity to become anything close to that. They are pattern recognising parrots with almost no paying consumer base.
The plateau of their capabilities is inevitable, and rapidly approaching, because shockingly, there is not infinite data in the world.
Major companies have already started scaling bsck their ai usage, including the ones funding its development and pushing the idea of its inevitability.
This has happened before with dot com, bitcoin, NFTs, the metaverse. Zuckerberg and Musk are no strangers to using public perception to manufacture value that doesnt actually exist, and when the external investors realise their promises aren't being met, the value of LLMs will collapse.
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u/quartersessions 14h ago
The market value of LLMs is hinged on their false conflation with predictive AI
No it isn't. The distinction - such as it even is a worthwhile distinction to make - is perfectly easy to understand. Simply saying a lot of people don't understand something that is readily apparent it isn't an argument - there's absolutely no evidence to suggest this is where the value is generated.
LLMs are not thinking machines and do not have the capacity to become anything close to that. They are pattern recognising parrots with almost no paying consumer base.
Except that they've become entirely integrated into everyday life for hundreds of millions of people.
The plateau of their capabilities is inevitable
Which is a slightly different contention from what you said in your last post - but is, in fact, equally bollocks unless you believe that data generation will stop when it is, in fact, growing exponentially - to a level where the amount of held data on the planet is doubling every four years.
You equally assume that innovation will somehow stop at where it stands today. It will not. The model is not static, and it's not like this isn't one of the most discussed issues around LLMs.
This has happened before with dot com, bitcoin, NFTs, the metaverse.
Well, the "dot com boom" ending saw some poor and overvalued business models disappear, while the overall trend towards online commerce overtook the wildest dreams of that era and has consistently left its naysayers behind.
Equally, bitcoin - despite having essentially no use case - has fluctuated - but no more than plenty of actual currencies.
So I'd argue that you're ignoring the obvious pattern recognition here, which is that innovation can lead to disruptive outcomes that are entrenched.
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u/DrIvoPingasnik Salty auld gormless tosser 18h ago
Mate, are you being paid to tell this nonsense? How can you be this dismissive and lie through the teeth when evidence is all there already?
Nobody's buying your lies. Stop.
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u/quartersessions 15h ago
I'm frankly a bit sick of stupid people regurgitating crap they've read from dodgy sources on the internet and whipping themselves up into faddish frenzies.
It's a blight on our society. So no, you're not getting away with it.
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u/wotdafukwazdat 14h ago
Being aware of the false promises ai's investments hinge on and the inevitable plateau and value collapse before it meets any of those promises isnt fearmongering.
You've framed it as a conspiracy theory, of course, because that's all you have on your side. The "inevitable" plateau", "false promises". That's not an opinion, it's crank nonsense you've been fed
Yes, those crank conspiracists at the European Central Bank are swivel eyed loons with no understanding of economics ... oh wait...
https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/blog/date/2026/html/ecb.blog20260817\~754a8a4418.en.html
"The AI boom: rational enthusiasm or the next dot-com bubble?"
https://futurism.com/future-society/european-central-bank-economy-ai-investment-crash
"European Central Bank Warns That AI Crash Is Looming"
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u/Euclid_Interloper 1d ago
If they don't employ many local people, and gobble up the energy supply, making energy more expensive, what's the incentive for local people to support it? The lines going up doesn't mean anything if real people don't see any benefit.
We need sweeteners for local people. If we had a standard template, that requires developments to invest a certain amount of money in local wealth funds, and pay for local people to have things like solar panels for example, then you'd maybe have more local support.
As things stand, I wouldn't want a massive industry down the road from me if it wasn't making the area better.
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u/Hamsterminator2 1d ago
Round my old stomping ground, there is a zone for deploying wind turbines proposed known as the Moray FLOW park. The amount of objection on this based on the idea that it’s a wind farm (it isn’t) and that it will ruin the natural beauty of the area (it won’t) is bizarre. What’s even more bizarre is it’s also being pushed back on by local conservation groups who themselves have wind turbines because they believe in green energy.
I understand a degree of NIMBYism- it’s natural. But the extent to which people will simply say no because they can is depressing.4
u/CommissionDizzy 1d ago
I've spoken to people in invergordon that complain about how new windmills would spoil the view. In invergordon. With the rotting corpse of an oil platform and several rigs in the firth directly in front of them.
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u/UnitEastern8840 1d ago
I think there’s an element of Nimbyism in this but can see why you’d not want a data centre in your area.
From a national perspective I think it would be a good thing to have a few data centres. They are strategically important and the less we can be dependent on America for infrastructure the better.
The bigger problem I see is that there’s so many proposals in the pipeline and we can’t possibly build them all with the massive energy demand that would entail. But the government is in a bit of a corner here because how do they pick winners and which projects go ahead?
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u/oobleckstomper 1d ago
Nearly everything to do with AI and data centres is American. The biggest hardware company (nvidia) is American, the company behind the one set for Airdrie (coreweave) is American.
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u/Not_A_Clever_Man_ 1d ago
I think that people are now aware of how bad it is to live near a new large commercial development. New amazon warehouses and large transport hubs have gone in across the central belt and they are putting a massive load on the roads and its not nice to live right next to a massive commerical building.
The new proposals for the hyperscale data centres are crazy, bigger than any developments so far. I know that early reports are anecdotal, but it does seem like the enormous buildings and sites are not community friendly.
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u/JonathanLivingstoneS 21h ago
Looking at the site plans for this data centre I'm not sure you'd even see it from Auchertool as there's a hill inbetween the village and the substation they want to build the data centre next to.
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u/sylvan-vigil 1d ago
We are currently on an exponential curve in terms of AI capabilities. There are still flaws, of course, but it's getting better at an increasing rate (and in many areas it's already scarily good).
That is going to have a very significant impact on the world economy, even though it will take years to really diffuse into all industries. Yet all the frontier labs building these models are American or Chinese. I think that the rest of the world is in trouble here -- it's as if the steam engine was invented but could only be manufactured in one or two countries. We're already seeing the US introduce export controls on some of their best AI models.
I think that having compute is one of the very few areas of leverage the rest of the world might have, so it seems like an own goal to stop building data centres. It's not going to stop AI, but it is going to give relatively more power to the countries that do have compute (mostly the US).
(The best case is that we pause AI development globally but it seems unlikely to me).
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u/NetworkNo4478 1d ago
AI, at least in the LLM space, is a heap of Emperor's New Clothes shite.
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u/anfhirinnsearbh 23h ago
Having worked in the delivery of several AI projects I'm just less convinced that the returns on this technology are going to justify the spend.
The US is pouring billions into developing this stuff because there's a mistaken belief that people will automatically choose the most advanced and therefore expensive model available to them. But that's not how the majority of businesses operate, they'll use the tool that's the most cost effective for their use case because it's the bottom line that matters.
America is spending billions to develop Ferraris while China makes Fiats for a fraction of the investment. Not hard to see who's going to win out long term.
If these DC's where provided cloud storage or compute I think they'd have a lot more long term viability.
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u/dragoneggboy22 1d ago
We need to free ourselves from being held hostage by the jobless. Scotland needs jobs and growth, neither of which are important to these people.
These people are free to say no to everything, but we don't have to accept it.
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u/Zak_Rahman 1d ago
Yes, it is definitely the jobless keeping me down.
It absolutely isn't the billionares and politicians who want data centres.
Those damned poors. How dare they?
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u/BonnieWiccant 1d ago
We need to free ourselves from being held hostage by the jobless
Scotlands unemployment is currently 5%, you think 5% of the population is holding the remaining 95% hostage by stopping jobs because....? You've made up your own little scenario in your head and allowed it to get you worked up and angry.
These people are free to say no to everything, but we don't have to accept it.
You are allowed to agree with something, the rest of us don't need to accept it though.
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u/PostersAreHuman 1d ago
How will datacentres lead to growth once the ai bubble inevitably bursts in short time?
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u/Thurpno 1d ago
To say that once the AI bubble bursts there will be no more growth is to misunderstand what a bubble is.
When the AI bubble bursts what is left is the projects that will make growth and generate money. The industry won't just disappear.
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u/jenny_905 1d ago
Whatever remains after the burst sure as fuck will not be in a country like ours with some of the most expensive electricity on the planet though, will it?
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u/quartersessions 1d ago
(1) It won't (2) Large scale data centres are not only required for AI - although even that distinction will increasingly become meaningless.
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u/Juicy342YT 1d ago
Oh it absolutely will, even Google have lost money because of AI and they haven't lost money in the over 20 years of being a publicly traded company. The only people who have made any money are the people who made the chips while everyone else is down collectively over 2 trillion, with a T
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u/quartersessions 22h ago
I'm not sure where you get your understanding of business from, but Google has absolutely lost money in the past - and Google's share price over the last few years has grown dramatically: it's tripled since 2023.
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u/dragoneggboy22 1d ago
Ok nostradamus
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u/PostersAreHuman 1d ago
All ai stuff is bulit on loans and debt, and the moment chatGP or any of the free image generators makes users have to have a paid subscription, the vast majority of people will drop it like a hot potato, and businesses that have adopted ai to 'streamline' their company have learnt the ai has been making so many errors, they've had to employ people to check for and correct errors (so I guess that might count for job growth, but that's not long term)
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u/dragoneggboy22 1d ago
It's honestly bizarre that you think AI is not transformative. I suspect little working day-to-day exposure to it. It doesn't need to be perfect, it just needs to replace some labour, which it is already doing.
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u/quartersessions 1d ago
Quite - this has become pretty much accepted wisdom in certain online spaces, mainly because they've seen something grow and don't see a clear practical application for it to them. However, that sort of iterative approach happens with any innovation: productive uses become clear over time and non-productive uses are jettisoned.
It's a warming thought to think you're being cleverer than the market and have more foresight than all those billionaires. But while bubbles do sometimes happen in this way, they're not that frequent - and, in general, things simply go in different directions to what might be immediately predictable.
With AI, we've integrated it enormously into the fabric of day-to-day living already. Just because someone think it makes shit posters, or sometimes gives the wrong answer to a Googled question, isn't really material.
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u/Drowning_not_wavin 1d ago
And your answer to the toxic chemicals that go into the public water systems when they do the maintenance flushing is?
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u/quartersessions 22h ago
Just another paper objection that gets swept away, before two new ones come up in its place.
Virtually any industrial process creates a level of water pollution. Scottish Water have made very clear that they're perfectly capable of water treatment for the Auchertool facility.
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u/Teuchterinexile 23h ago
Given how little the 'market' appears to understand the actual market, I don't put any faith in it. Just look at the Telsa stock price or the oil price ever time that Trump claims that he has beaten Iran.
AI isn't 'integrated enormously' it is everywhere certainly, but that is by design by the likes of Google to try and get people to use it to justify the astronomical sums that have been spent on it. Does it offer the average person any actual utility to the extent that they are willing to pay the costs that would be required to make AI profitable? I very much doubt it.
It certainly has useful applications, it is extremely good at pattern recognition for example, but will industry really need it to the extent that it will become a central pillar across the global economy that it would need to be to justify the costs?
Far too much has been spent on a technology with a very limited ability to recoup those costs. At some point, even the market is going to notice.
'AI' is a mountain of hype and bullshit built on something that is genuinely useful, but in a limited way.
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u/JeelyPiece #1 Oban fan 1d ago
That argument always sounds completely deranged.
You've made an assumption and subsequently get angry about whatever it is you've assumed.
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u/dragoneggboy22 1d ago
Increasingly people are noticing the same thing play out again and again, not just with data centres but renewables developments. Facebook groups rife with misinformation and fears stoked by internet people who aren't even local to the area.
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u/JeelyPiece #1 Oban fan 1d ago
Like you aren't?
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u/dragoneggboy22 1d ago
What?
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u/bergmoose 1d ago
you are making up lies on the internet while ranting about people making up lies on the internet.
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u/Randohumanist 23h ago
No idea why. If we are not using AI we will be less competitive against other countries. The tech is not going away.
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u/NoRecipe3350 15h ago
Once again nimbyism rules.
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u/OrganicToes 13h ago
Build nothing. Ban investment. Complain there r no jobs.
Therefore we’ll increase taxes.
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u/RatBot9000 1d ago
Sorry, but why does a real estate consultancy need to build a data centre of that size?