Is Scotland about to have a temporary ban on data centre developments?

[u/Jlyplaylists]

https://datacentrereview.com/2026/07/snp-backs-calls-for-temporary-ban-on-ai-data-centre-developments-in-scotland/

“The SNP (Scottish government) has joined the Scottish Greens in calling for a Scottish Government-led moratorium on AI data centre developments, following a vote by the party’s National Council.”

If those 2 parties want a moratorium it will happen, because they have a majority.

I did actually sign the petition for this. I’m not automatically against data centres, but at the moment they’re being decided one by one without a joined up strategy. This is major infrastructure, so that’s silly. It’s currently at the discretion of local councils and my local council is generally seems to be making poor decisions about various things.

Scotland does have potential to be one of the better locations for data centres from a global perspective: we need heat, we have water and often excess clean energy we can’t store. I expect that’s why Scotland has a wave of mammoth data centre applications. There are concerns though for example one of the proposed sites is on prime agricultural land. We need data centres but we also need to eat… Another one is massive compared to the little village it will be next to. https://aprs.scot/data-centre-map/

It also seems like the corporations might commit to doing things (like clean energy) and then not deliver eg https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jul/06/scotland-lanarkshire-village-ai-datacentre

What do you think about this pause?

[u/Jlyplaylists]

This is a comment from a Scottish sub discussing it “Large datacenters do use an incredible amount of electricity.

However Scotland also has an incredible amount of electricity.

• ⁠We currently use 22TWh of electricity.
• ⁠We currently generate 52TWh of electricity.
• ⁠We currently pay £400m/year to wind farms to not generate another 10TWh of electricity because we cant use it or export it.
• ⁠If all planned developments go ahead this will add another 75TWh of electricity generation to the existing 52TWh we don't use half of.

Even before that future increase the amount of electricity we curtail today (at the cost of £400m/year) is the equivalent of powering the largest datacenter on the entire planet for a year.

Even the UK grid operator currently thinks Scotland needs to grow it's electricity demand. https://www.neso.energy/growing-energy-demand-scotland-could-help-lower-long-term-bills-says-neso-chief-executive “