Open letter to the Scottish Government on national planning guidance for data centres

Current overview

There is no single official source of how many data centres operate in Scotland, their location or size,¹ and the absence of any agreed definition of what counts as a data centre means the figures in circulation measure different things. Recent reporting puts 15 commercial sites in operation, the largest with a capacity of 12MW,² while Scottish Water counts 13 sites connected to its network.³ Any assessment of what Scotland can absorb needs to start from an official record of what is already operating, rather than from an estimate.

Against that, as of the beginning of September 2026 there were 24 proposals for major new sites either in the planning system or approaching it,⁴ 10 of them from a single developer, Apatura.⁵ If all were approved, they would draw around 6,000MW, more than one and a half times Scotland's total peak power use at present,⁶ with individual sites pitched at 600MW at Auchtertool in Fife and 540MW at Hurlford in East Ayrshire, the larger of which is around 50 times the largest facility now operating.⁷

Gaps to fill

National Planning Framework 4 has listed green data centres as a national development since 2023. That status means the need for the development is treated as already settled, so a planning authority or an objector can question where a site goes and what it will do to the area, but not whether it should be built at all. No Scottish planning document says what makes a data centre green, so any proposal can claim the status and the protection that comes with it.⁸ Reporting of water use by commercial facilities is not mandatory in the United Kingdom, so no unified set of figures exists, and the projected water use in data centre planning documents is often obscured and in most cases absent altogether.⁹

The direction issued on 16 September 2026 requires any application for a data centre with power capacity above 50MW to be accompanied by an environmental impact assessment, which is a significant step.¹⁰ Nothing yet sets out what those assessments should contain or in what units, meaning results from one site to the next will not be comparable. There is also no requirement to assess separate applications together, even where they sit in the same council area. Planning authorities have had to notify Scottish Ministers of applications above 50MW since 17 August 2026, so that information now sits in government hands.¹¹ Once consent is granted there is no monitoring regime specific to data centres, so there is no established way to check that what was promised at the application stage is what happens in practice.

The National Energy System Operator has said that up to a fifth of the United Kingdom's data centre capacity could be sited in Scotland, which on one estimate would mean more than 70 data centres.¹² Ireland shows how quickly this can expand, since between 2015 and 2025 the share of Ireland's metered electricity consumed by data centres rose from 5 per cent to 23 per cent, almost as much as every Irish household combined.¹³ At no point was there a holistic approval process predicting and approving that level of consumption, and it reached that level one approval at a time.

Six key principles

The recommendations that follow are detailed, but they rest on six simple principles.

1. Scale before consent. The overall scale of the development should be settled before individual sites are consented, so that a national view of how much capacity Scotland needs comes before individual decisions rather than after them.
2. Consistent measurements. Every site should measure and report the same things in the same way. Figures that cannot be compared between sites are of little use to a planning authority or to a community.
3. Environmental information is public information. What a site uses and discharges should be published as a matter of course rather than released on request or withheld as commercially confidential.
4. Consultation must be able to change outcomes. Consultation has to be capable of changing the outcome, since a process that cannot alter a proposal is not really consultation at all.
5. Conditions must bind after consent. Commitments made at the application stage require monitoring, penalties and a clear route for residents to complain.
6. Human rights standards apply to infrastructure decisions. Scottish Ministers are already bound by several of them, and the guidance should show how it meets them.

Principle one: scale before consent

The overall scale of the development should be settled before individual sites are consented, so that a national view of how much capacity Scotland needs comes before individual decisions rather than after them.

A national assessment of how much data centre capacity Scotland needs, how much it can sustain and where to site them

The Scottish Parliament's own research service has noted that the surge in proposals has outpaced planning policy.¹⁴ National Planning Framework 4 was adopted in February 2023, before any proposals for a 600MW facility in Scotland.¹⁵ The guidance should be based on a national figure for how much capacity Scotland would need to meet its energy demand, how much it can sustain and a view of where it should be located without exhausting local resources and falling most heavily on the communities least able to absorb it. Without that figure, each application continues to be judged as a standalone project.

Cumulative assessment, across applications not only within them

An environmental impact assessment report must already describe the cumulation of effects with other existing and approved projects.¹⁶ That duty has three limits. It falls on each applicant to assess its own scheme against the others, it covers only projects already approved and not the two dozen still in the pipeline, and it produces no shared ceiling against which any authority can refuse. What these developments draw on is shared, since they connect to the same grid, take water from the same supply, occupy the same limited land and count against the same climate targets. North Lanarkshire alone holds six proposals, including two neighbouring schemes at Ravenscraig and two at Chapelhall, and no authority is asked whether the six can be accommodated together.¹⁷ In its General Comment No. 27 on the environmental dimension of sustainable development, the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has said that where an activity poses a significant risk to the environment, assessments should be conducted prior to the activity, should be independent and should consider cumulative impacts.¹⁸

Treating a project brought forward in parts as a single project

Two requirements now attach to a data centre at 50MW of power capacity, meaning the total electrical power available to the site. Since 17 August 2026, a planning authority must notify Scottish Ministers of any such application within seven days of validation, sending the application, its supporting documents and any environmental impact assessment report or screening opinion, and that duty applies to applications already under consideration as well as new ones.¹⁹ Since 17 September 2026, a data centre exceeding 50MW that falls within the Schedule 2 descriptions for industrial estate or urban development projects is EIA development by direction, so it no longer passes through screening.²⁰ A site of 45MW triggers neither, which leaves a risk that one project is brought forward as several smaller applications, each sitting below the line, on neighbouring land under common control. Smaller sites remain subject to case by case screening under the EIA regulations, and although screening must consider cumulation with other development,²¹ nothing expressly requires the parts of one scheme to be measured against the 50MW threshold as a whole.

Principle two: consistent measurements

Every site should measure and report the same things in the same way.

Mandatory, standardised environmental impact assessments

The new requirement for an environmental impact assessment above 50MW is welcome. On its own it will not give planning authorities or communities figures they can compare, because nothing yet sets out what an assessment should contain or in what units. The published reports of the largest operators show where that leads, since Google reports water in gallons (with a litre conversion) by calendar year²² while Microsoft reports in megalitres by a financial year running from July to June, so that its figures and Google's cover different twelve months.²³ Meta's 2025 report gives no operational water volume in the report itself, only the water its restoration projects returned.²⁴ Some count water withdrawn while others count water consumed. Much of what is reported is not even measured, since Microsoft states that most of its sites have no discharge meter, so withdrawals and consumption are estimated.²⁵

The same problem is visible here, as set out above.²⁶ The Environment Agency has said it faces barriers in obtaining information on data centre water use and that more transparency is needed.²⁷

In its General Comment No. 36 on the right to life, the Human Rights Committee has said that environmental degradation, climate change and unsustainable development constitute some of the most pressing and serious threats to the ability of present and future generations to enjoy the right to life. The same general comment identifies the conduct of environmental impact assessments, the implementation of substantive environmental standards and appropriate access to information on environmental hazards as measures through which states give effect to that right.²⁸ Scotland need not devise its own indicators, since the European Union has required every data centre above 500 kW of IT power to report a common set of indicators each year since 2024, covering energy use, power usage effectiveness, water usage effectiveness, renewable energy factor, energy reuse factor and installed capacity, and those definitions are published and free to adopt.²⁹

Backup generators included in the assessment

Hyperscale data centres carry diesel generators to keep running through a grid failure. Generators of this size are permitted by SEPA after planning consent has been granted,³⁰ and the fuel they store is regulated separately,³¹ so the planning decision is often taken without the generator fleet being assessed as part of the development. Action to Protect Rural Scotland calculated, from the documents for a proposed 210MW data centre at the Gyle in Edinburgh, that the development would need more than 200 backup generators consuming 68,040 litres of diesel an hour when running, which it put at the equivalent of 106,312 idling diesel cars.³² That site sits upwind of the city centre, close to homes and 220 metres from a nursery which was not on the list of neighbours notified of the application,³³ and it was not required to produce an environmental impact assessment until a Scottish Government reporter in the Planning and Environmental Appeals Division directed on 30 July 2026 that one was required.³⁴ The stored fuel is a risk as well as the exhaust, since on 11 September 2026 about 5,000 gallons of diesel leaked from a storage tank outside an Equinix data centre in Secaucus, New Jersey, with some of it reaching a tributary of the Hackensack River.³⁵

A definition of a data centre in planning policy

Much of what is set out above depends on having a definition. National Planning Framework 4 mentions data centres once, as a class of National Development 12 described only as "Green data centres", and its glossary defines neither "data centre" nor "green data centre".³⁶ The 2021 vision and action plan for green datacentres sets out four pillars for growing the sector but offers no definition, no criteria and no thresholds, and does not mention water at all.³⁷ Scotland's AI Strategy, published in March 2026, does not define the term either, and instead commits Ministers to publish guidance by 2027 on "what factors are prevalent in a 'green' data centre".³⁸ The definitions that do exist appear only in the two directions issued this year, where a data centre means a proposed structure, or part of a structure, used to house computing and data storage resources, and power capacity means the total proposed electrical power available to it.^39,40 Each direction applies that definition only above 50MW, so nothing tells a planning authority what is required of a site below that line, or how the scale of a site should shape what is asked of it.

Defining green data centres in national policy

National Planning Framework 4 has treated green data centres as a national development since 2023, which means the principle of the development does not need to be agreed in later consenting processes, so objections must focus on the detail of a proposal rather than on whether it is needed.⁴¹ No document defines what green means. The 2021 action plan uses the term throughout without explaining it,⁴² and the AI Strategy promises guidance on the factors prevalent in a green data centre by 2027 while describing Scottish Water's role as guiding location decisions, encouraging the reuse of treated wastewater and promoting closed loop systems, all of it advisory.⁴³ Into that gap, a developer behind more Scottish proposals than any other sought Scottish Government endorsement of its own green data centre charter between April and June 2026.⁴⁴

Principle three: environmental information is public information

Disclosure of cooling chemicals and discharge water

Discharges from a data centre are authorised by SEPA or consented by Scottish Water after the planning decision,^45,46 so neither the planning authority nor the community sees what will be used or where it will go when the application is before them. ChemSec found in September 2026 that the majority of the world's largest PFAS producers are expanding capacity, driven by demand from AI and data centre infrastructure, semiconductor manufacturing and battery materials, and that manufacturers are explicitly framing their investments around the AI revolution and microchip fabrication. One of them, Chemours, is expanding its production of PFAS refrigerants and is preparing a product it says will revolutionise data centre cooling.⁴⁷ The alternative course is available, since 3M completed its exit from PFAS manufacturing at the end of 2025 and BASF has committed to phasing out PFAS formulated products (other than pesticides) by 2028.⁴⁸ This month the new UN Special Rapporteur on toxics and human rights told the Human Rights Council that poor management of toxic chemicals and hazardous waste threatens many, if not all, human rights, singled out PFAS, and called for a ban on non essential uses.⁴⁹

In its General Comment No. 25 on science and economic, social and cultural rights, the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights addresses the precautionary principle, the risks that come with new technologies, and the public's right to information about and participation in decisions on science, so that where an action or policy may lead to unacceptable harm to the public or the environment, action must be taken to avoid or diminish that harm even in the absence of full scientific certainty.⁵⁰ The Human Rights Committee has likewise asked states to pay due regard to the precautionary approach in the context of environmental threats to the right to life.⁵¹ The Scottish Government took the same approach in September, when the Chief Planner said it was appropriate to apply caution in ensuring potentially significant environmental effects are considered from the outset.⁵²

Annual site level reporting as a condition of consent

There is no general legal requirement for a data centre to publish the water or electricity it uses at a given site.⁵³ The Local Government Association found in July 2026 that corporate level reporting does not give councils the site specific, verifiable information they need, and that councils struggle to answer their own residents' freedom of information requests because they cannot obtain reliable data from suppliers.⁵⁴ Where figures are not required, operators have resisted giving them, as happened in The Dalles, Oregon, where the city sued a local newspaper to keep Google's water use secret as a trade secret, with Google funding more than 100,000 dollars of the city's legal costs. When the case settled after 13 months, the records showed the data centres used more than a quarter of all the water used in the city.^55,56 There is precedent for requiring the figures, since in August 2026 New Jersey enacted legislation requiring data centre owners and operators to report their power and water use twice a year.⁵⁷

Once a planning authority holds site level figures, they become information held by a public body. Article 19(2) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights protects the freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds.⁵⁸ In its General Comment No. 34 on freedom of expression, the Human Rights Committee has said that states "should proactively put in the public domain Government information of public interest", and "should make every effort to ensure easy, prompt, effective and practical access to such information".⁵⁹ The UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has said that where water services are operated by third parties, protecting the right to water requires a regulatory system with independent monitoring, genuine public participation and penalties for non compliance, which offers a useful benchmark for the guidance.⁶⁰

No commercial confidentiality over these figures

Figures on water, electricity, emissions and noise are environmental information within the meaning of the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004.⁶¹ Under those Regulations a public authority may withhold commercial information only where disclosure would substantially prejudice a legitimate economic interest and the public interest favours withholding, and information on emissions cannot be withheld on commercial confidentiality grounds at all.⁶² An operator's claim of commercial sensitivity over these figures therefore has a narrow legal footing. The Aarhus Convention, which the United Kingdom ratified in 2005, sets the same expectation, since Article 4 requires public authorities to make environmental information available on request and Article 5 requires them to collect and disseminate it proactively, including information on activities that significantly affect the environment.⁶³ Where access is refused, the Human Rights Committee has said in General Comment No. 34 that "authorities should provide reasons for any refusal to provide access to information", and that arrangements should be in place for appeals from refusals.⁶⁴ Publishing the figures as a matter of course, without waiting for a request, means those exceptions are never reached.

A public register of data centres, applications and consents

Scotland has no official register of the data centres it already has, let alone of what is proposed, so anyone seeking an overview has to rely on informal lists compiled outside government.⁶⁵ Since 17 August 2026, planning authorities have had to notify Scottish Ministers of every application above 50MW, sending the application and its supporting documents, so the information now sits in government hands.⁶⁶

Principle four: consultation must be able to change outcomes

Consultation time that matches the material

A hyperscale application runs to thousands of pages of technical material. The community has at least twelve weeks of pre application consultation before a major application is lodged,⁶⁷ but the environmental impact assessment report does not exist at that stage, so the community gives its views without the environmental information. When the report arrives with the application, the period for representations is 30 days,⁶⁸ and by then the location, scale and design are settled. Article 6 of the Aarhus Convention requires participation early in the procedure, when all options are open, and requires due consideration to be taken of the outcome in the decision.⁶⁹ Thirty days is not long enough for residents to read, understand and respond to an assessment of that size, and the earlier consultation cannot serve that purpose while the assessment is still unwritten.

Independent advice for the communities facing an application

A hyperscale applicant arrives with planning consultants, engineers and lawyers, while the community affected is usually relying on volunteers reading the documents in the evenings. Participation that the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights would recognise as meaningful is difficult to achieve where only one side can interpret the technical material.⁷⁰

Identifying who carries the heaviest burden

In its General Comment No. 27 on the environmental dimension of sustainable development, the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has said that states must identify those most at risk, address the structural inequalities that heighten their exposure to environmental harm, and ensure the meaningful participation of affected individuals and groups throughout all stages of the decision making.⁷¹ Nothing in the planning process currently asks that question of a data centre application, and the answer varies by site, since the households nearest a proposal are not always those with the least capacity to respond to it.

Principle five: conditions must bind after consent

Binding limits on water use

Thames Water has estimated that a large data centre might use between four and 19 million litres of water a day, and describes the upper figure as the equivalent of supplying more than 50,000 households.⁷² Much of that is drinking quality water, because it is the cheapest and cleanest supply available. A site that abstracts its own water needs a SEPA licence, which SEPA can restrict when it declares water scarcity, but a site supplied from the mains faces no such limit, and neither route asks whether cooling should use drinking quality water at all.⁷³ In General Comment No. 27, the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has said that states are required to enact and enforce regulatory frameworks to prevent businesses and other actors from polluting, overextracting from or otherwise degrading water resources.⁷⁴

Mandatory waste heat recovery

A data centre turns almost all the electricity it uses into heat, and in Scotland that heat is mostly vented to the air while the Scottish Government separately funds heat networks to cut emissions from buildings.⁷⁵ National Planning Framework 4 already points in the right direction, since Policy 19(d) supports national and major developments that generate waste or surplus heat only where a heat and power plan shows how the recovered energy will be used,⁷⁶ and Article 26(6) of the EU Energy Efficiency Directive requires member states to ensure that data centres with a total rated energy input above 1 MW use their waste heat, unless the operator shows through a cost benefit analysis that it is not technically or economically feasible.⁷⁷ Scotland already has the machinery for this. Every council must look at which parts of its area are suitable for a heat network, and it can then designate those areas as heat network zones. In making that judgment, the council has to take account of existing infrastructure that could help supply a network, and the Act names waste heat expressly, so a data centre's waste heat is exactly that kind of infrastructure.⁷⁸ Policy 19(d) does not say what a heat and power plan must achieve or bind the operator once consent is granted, which is the gap the guidance can close.

Enforceable conditions, with community involvement in monitoring

Once consent is granted there is no monitoring regime specific to data centres, so nothing tests whether the commitments made at the application stage are kept in practice. The enforcement powers in Part VI of the Town and Country Planning (Scotland) Act 1997 are only as effective as the monitoring behind them,⁷⁹ and no authority is resourced to monitor a hyperscale site's water, power and generator use against its conditions. The UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has said that where third parties operate water services, protecting the right to water requires a regulatory system with independent monitoring, genuine public participation and penalties for non compliance.⁸⁰ The Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights expect operational level grievance mechanisms that the people affected can actually use, so that complaints are addressed early and directly.⁸¹ The end of a site's life is the other gap, since the buildings, plant and ground conditions remain when operations stop, and Scottish planning policy already expects financial guarantees for the restoration of mineral workings against exactly that risk.⁸²

Principle six: human rights standards apply to infrastructure decisions

Scottish Ministers are already bound by several of them, and the guidance should show how it meets them.

The right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment as a stated objective

The United Kingdom voted for UN General Assembly resolution 76/300, which recognises the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment.⁸³ The substantive content of the right, as set out by the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and the environment, includes clean air, safe water, adequate sanitation and non toxic environments, which are the elements a hyperscale data centre bears on most directly.⁸⁴ The same interests are protected domestically through Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights on respect for private and family life and the home, which the European Court of Human Rights has applied to pollution affecting people in their homes,⁸⁵ and through Article 2 on the right to life, both of which bind Scottish Ministers under section 57(2) of the Scotland Act 1998.⁸⁶ Since July 2024 the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (Incorporation) (Scotland) Act 2024 has also made it unlawful for Scottish Ministers and public authorities to act incompatibly with the Convention rights of children in devolved matters, which include planning.⁸⁷

Human rights due diligence by developers

The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights expect companies to identify and assess any actual or potential adverse human rights impacts with which they may be involved, drawing on human rights expertise and meaningful consultation with potentially affected groups.⁸⁸