Data centres use huge amounts of energy and water – a recent proposal for a data centre in Edinburgh is reported to require power equivalent to that used by more than half a million homes, the population of Glasgow and Edinburgh combined.

The developers of this data centre will not be required to draw up an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) as part of the planning process. This is because it has been screened out as unnecessary by the Local Authority. Environmental Impact Assessments are required of major infrastructure and lay out all the environmental impacts in one place so that decision makers can make an informed decision. However we are seeing applications for data centres and large battery storage installations being screened out of requiring EIAs. This is extremely concerning because the scale of energy requirements for data centres mean that they have a disproportionately high impact on the environment.

We are calling on the Scottish Government to ensure that data centres and large battery storage installations are named in Schedule 1 of the EIA regulations so they no longer fall through the net, and that data centres should be subject to strict energy efficiency and water use standards.