Scottish communities protest against potential AI data centre developments.
As AI has surged in popularity, Scotland has become a key location for development of the large-scale infrastructure required to power the technology.
As of 20 August 2026, there were 23 hyperscale AI data centres proposed across the country, according to Action to Protect Rural Scotland (APRS), who manage a live public map of proposals.
Developers see Scotland as an ideal location for development due to the surplus of renewable energy produced by wind turbines. The country currently produces more renewable energy than it uses.
At times, this surplus surpasses the grid’s capacity to transmit the energy, forcing wind turbines to be turned off. The UK government says the ‘constraint cost’ of this is currently passed onto consumers, and says data centres in ‘AI Growth Zones’ present an opportunity to use excess energy and reduce electricity costs.
The Scottish Government has described this as an opportunity for the country to become a “leader in green data centres” with zero to minimal reliance on fossil fuels.
However, there has been resistance to the proposed developments by some concerned about the potentially harmful impacts they may bring.
Groups including the Scottish Greens, APRS, and the SNP National Council are calling for a national moratorium that would pause the development of new centres that have not yet received planning permission until the government fully assesses their environmental and grid energy impacts.
There is currently no national framework for these developments, which must go through the same local authority planning process as any other large-scale infrastructure.
Larbert, a town in the Central Belt, is home to one of the proposed sites of development and related opposition. Here, development has reached the stage of a full planning application sitting with the local council, making it the site furthest into the planning process.
The Larbert Data Centre Campus, proposed by the developer Apatura, would be 300MW, spanning 55 acres, and standing 28 metres tall at the highest point.
For reference, Scotland’s largest currently operational data centre in Lanarkshire has a capacity of 12MW, and spans less than two acres.
The plans have concerned many local residents, some of whom have formed the “Say No to Larbert AI Data Centre” group, which campaigns for a stop to the proposed campus, as well as backing a national moratorium.
Speaking to The Glasgow Guardian, Michael Maciocia, who founded the group, said the issue has mobilised members of his local community, some for the first time. “There are people in this community that have never objected to anything in their life, that have woken up,” he said.
The Glasgow Guardian attended a demonstration organised by the group on 13 August to speak to local residents. Campaigners frequently referenced fears around environmental damage, noise pollution, and energy and water consumption that could drive up utility bills, as well as the location of the centre.
These concerns echo those expressed at other proposed sites such as Auchtertool.
The Larbert site is in close proximity to a local care home, thousands of residences, and is situated 500m from Forth Valley Royal Hospital, one of the biggest hospitals in the country.
The developer, Apatura, has described the location in Larbert as “strategic” due to its energy grid connectivity.
Michael Hunter, Data Centre Partnerships Director at Apatura, acknowledged concerns, stating that they “completely understand where a number of local objections are coming from”, and wherever possible will “mitigate any concerns that are raised”.
On water consumption, Scottish Water said that current data centre use “remains very small compared to overall demand”. Speaking to The Glasgow Guardian, Colin Lindsay, Developer Services Manager at Scottish Water Horizons, stressed the importance of planning ahead for water security, and considering water “at the earliest possible stages of planning”.
Lindsay said that location is “absolutely critical” in these developments as water resilience is a highly local issue.
He added that Scottish Water’s priority is “protecting customers, public health and the environment”, adding that they will be clear when a proposal presents a “genuine risk to long-term water resilience”.
Hunter highlighted the benefits Apatura says the site will bring to the local community, most importantly in the form of “high value, highly skilled jobs”. The proposal outlines 297 on-site jobs, with a further 515 in the local area.
However, the consultation process also raised concern. One demonstrator, who wished to remain anonymous, said she shares a property boundary with the site but was not notified about the proposal. “We had no idea about it. I personally found out about it through a Facebook page that had nothing to do with the data centre,” she said. “It just really shook me, knowing that we shared a property boundary with it and had no idea”.
Hunter said that while it was difficult to comment on specific cases, Apatura has a “legal obligation” to notify local residents, which it did through mail correspondence on two separate occasions.
In a statement to The Glasgow Guardian, Falkirk Council said that neighbour notification was carried out by the Council on 9 June 2026, in line with statutory planning requirements for major and national proposals of this type.
The Glasgow Guardian spoke to Kat Jones, Director of Action to Protect Rural Scotland, about the range of concern around the proposed hyperscale centres, and the wide cross-section of people joining the campaign. “People who are thinking about more national or international issues are getting involved, and that combination of the local, but also the national and the international, is pretty unusual in campaigns that we’ve worked on ourselves”, she said.
So far, the Scottish Government has stopped short of implementing the formal, nationwide moratorium campaigners have called for. Instead, on August 17, ministers implemented a new oversight Direction requiring planning authorities to notify Scottish Ministers of new applications for data centres over 50MW within seven days of validation. The government says this will “enable strategic oversight and monitoring of applications” and their impact on infrastructure.
But many do not believe this goes far enough and continue to call for a pause on all new developments until national guidelines around hyperscale centres are introduced.
“We need the moratorium to give time to work out what are the impacts [and] implications of these enormous things coming into Scotland,” said Jones.
Hazel Mackay, a member of Say No to Larbert Data Centre agreed. “At the moment, we have local authorities, all desperately trying to make decisions without the right information, without the tools to do it,” she said. “It needs to be done at the national level”.
