THE Scottish Government is facing calls to “urgently address” what has been described as “major shortcomings” in its policy on data centres.
Campaigners at Action to Protect Rural Scotland (APRS) allege that ministers have failed to include the emissions from hyperscale AI data centres in work looking at the impact of what is classed as “green data centres” on climate change targets.
APRS director Kat Jones branded the situation “pretty shocking”.
In the section of the Scottish Government’s NPF4 national planning framework on green data centres, it states these will only have “overall negligible impact” on achieving the country’s emissions reduction targets.
But APRS – which has been calling for a moratorium on new data centres amid concerns over their environmental impact – said an investigation it had carried out showed the Government had failed to include hyperscale data centres, which tech firm IBM has said can house at least 5,000 servers and “quite possibly miles of connection equipment”.
APRS noted that the Government’s greenhouse gas assessment was published in October 2022 – coming before the launch of AI systems such as ChatGTP, which have sparked rising demand for data centres.
Jones said: “It is pretty shocking to find out that the vast carbon footprint of hyperscale data centres has been completely excluded from the Government’s greenhouse gas analysis.
“However, it is not surprising because, when our national planning framework was being written, Chat GPT had not launched and hyperscale AI data centres simply didn’t exist.
“One can only conclude that the ‘green data centres’ mentioned in Scotland’s planning framework do not include hyperscale AI data centres, and only include the smaller type of data centres used for business, data storage, research and cloud use.”
Jones added that by not coming up with a definition of a “green data centre” the Scottish Government had put local planning authorities in an “impossible situation”.
The countryside charity said it had raised this lack of a definition with the Government in December 2025 and had expected “some urgent policy work to be done”.
But Jones stated: “Instead we had a sentence in a parliamentary question saying that it was up to local authorities to decide what a green data centre was.”
She insisted: “The new Scottish Government needs to urgently address the major shortcomings of their current policy on data centres.”
APRS now fears the current lack of definition for a “green data centre” could impact whether a planned new data centre for the outskirts of Edinburgh goes ahead.
In February, Edinburgh City Council refused planning permission for a such a facility at the Gyle – but developers have appealed against this.
Jones said: “The Edinburgh Gyle data centre appeal is set to be incredibly consequential for the future of Scotland’s planned hyperscale data centres.
“It will bring to light the complete lack of policy that exists around hyperscale AI data centres.”
She added: “This planning decision is being appealed, so the decision will be taken by the Scottish Government and the lack of a proper policy framework for hyperscale AI data centres will become glaringly obvious.
“Surely the only option now is that the Government put a moratorium on all decisions on hyperscale AI data centres so that policy can catch up with the headlong rush to use Scotland’s energy resources and countryside in the service of US tech giants to train and operate their AI models.”
A Scottish Government spokesperson said: “Scotland has significant strengths as a location for green data centres – abundant renewable energy, a highly skilled workforce and a resilient fibre backbone.
“Our aim is to secure commercial investment in data centres that help drive economic growth while aligning with Scotland’s net zero ambitions and delivering benefits for communities.”
