Campaigners have called for a moratorium on new hyperscale data centers in Scotland, claiming planned developments could harm the environment and swallow up more than 5GW of power.

Stop Climate Chaos Scotland (SCCS), which represents several environmental groups, has written to Scotland’s First Minister, John Swinney, demanding that all data center developments be paused “pending rigorous assessments of their climate impact.”

In an open letter to Swinney, the group said Scotland’s draft Climate Change Plan, which sets out how the Scottish economy will cut emissions and move towards Net Zero, “does not factor in the vast energy demands of the data centers currently progressing through the planning process and contains no information on how the impact of new hyperscale data centers will be managed and mitigated, merely describing them as a ‘clean energy-intensive’ industry.”

It points out that data centers currently proposed for Scotland could consume between 4.7GW and 5.2GW at full build-out. Scotland’s current peak winter demand for electricity is 4GW, and SCCS worries that the data centers may also push up consumer energy bills.

Dr. Kat Jones, director of Action to Protect Rural Scotland, a member of SCCS, said: “Hyperscale AI data centers are the gravest threat imaginable to Scotland’s climate ambitions, to our countryside, and to energy bills. They bring with them a tiny number of jobs, and the whole country risks paying the price for big tech’s latest bubble.

“In America, this threat has united a broad coalition, from rural conservatives worried about the impact on their local communities to environmental activists concerned about the climate impacts. And all sides know how unpopular spikes in energy costs would be. I hope all parties at Holyrood will take a closer look and support an urgent moratorium on these disastrous projects.”

Scotland has not traditionally been a major data center market, but the AI boom has seen a number of large projects proposed for the nation. These include a 500MW data center in North Lanarkshire that will be built by DataVita for use by CoreWeave, a 300MW campus outside Falkirk, and a trio of hyperscale facilities dubbed ‘The Stoics’ that could eventually scale to 1.5GW.

Research from Foxglove, released in December, said data centers planned for Scotland could consume 2GW-3GW.

Data center moratoria have been enacted in various markets around the world over the years, for a variety of reasons, usually relating to power or space availability. Ireland’s capital, Dublin, has operated under a de facto moratorium since 2022, with grid operator EirGrid declining to connect new projects as energy is scarce. This has led developers to look at ways they can supply their own power.

In the US, moratoriums have been imposed at the county level, and state-wide data center bans are now under discussion in Pennsylvania and Illinois, among others, with residents increasingly concerned that large developments will see their bills rise.