The Scottish Greens have welcomed the Scottish Government’s decision to require an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) for a proposed hyperscale AI data centre at South Gyle in Edinburgh, but say the same level of scrutiny must now apply to every hyperscale application in the country.
According to the party, there are currently 24 live applications for hyperscale data centres in Scotland. If all of them were approved, the Greens say, they would consume more than 1.5 times Scotland’s total peak energy use — a claim that goes to the heart of a growing debate about the compatibility of large-scale AI compute build-out with Scotland’s climate, grid and planning frameworks.
The Greens are calling for a pause on all new hyperscale data centre applications until a “robust national strategy” is introduced, covering climate impact, energy and water use, effects on nature and meaningful community involvement in the planning process.
Kayleigh Kinross-O’Neill, Scottish Greens MSP for Edinburgh and Lothians East, framed the South Gyle decision as a welcome first step rather than a settled outcome.
“I am pleased that the Scottish Government has listened to Greens and others, and have mandated an Environmental Impact Assessment for this AI data centre in South Gyle,” she said.
“But this decision must become a precedent rather than an outlier. It is ridiculous that you could ever have a situation where something so damaging could ever be allowed without the strictest assessments and scrutiny.”
She was blunt on the underlying pressures large data campuses can place on host regions. “Hyperscale data centres like this can have a devastating impact on the climate, local communities and nature so it’s simply mind boggling for an Environmental Impact Assessment not to be the norm in these planning cases,” she said.
Kinross-O’Neill went further, positioning the party against what she described as an unmanaged rush of applications. “We need to end the corporate free-for-all that we are seeing and ensure that we are not selling our country off to tech giants who have no concern about the impact on people and planet,” she said.
On the wider policy ask, she added: “The Scottish Greens, and campaigners from across the country, have called for the Scottish Government to urgently halt all of these data centres applications until a robust, transparent national strategy is in place. That has to include mandatory Environmental Impact Assessments and a planning process in which local people and not just profiteers can have their voices heard.”
For Scotland’s tech sector, the intervention lands at a sensitive moment, with hyperscale capacity being pitched as a foundation for the country’s AI ambitions. The South Gyle decision suggests operators and investors should expect environmental scrutiny to become a routine part of Scottish data centre planning rather than an exception.
