Action to Protect Rural Scotland

10/10/2026

Great investigation on the plans at Chapelcross from Sky and fantastic contributions from the local campaign!

Sky's Scotland correspondent Connor Gillies visits the town of Annan, where locals have expressed their outrage at plans for a £16bn data centre.

09/10/2026

Looking back on last week when we had THREE FRONT PAGE news items within six days - that was a bit of a hectic week, and things are no less hectic now.

We have three active calls to action for people so please go to the webpage and help us with the following!
1. OBJECT to the Chapelcross Data Centre
2. GIVE YOUR VIEWS to the Parliamentary Committees investigating Hyperscale Data Centres
3. RESPOND to a consultation by SEPA on diesel generators in the AI Growth Zone

Link in the comments

09/10/2026

Revelations that the 120MW data centre planned for the AI Growth zone at Chapelhall will run diesel generators to assist with cooling when temperatures are above 21 degrees have been compounded by concerns over proposals for an extension at an existing site which is operating nearby. SEPA are seeking public opinion on the generators proposed for the DV1 extension, which will only have scrubbers on half of the chimneys, among other issues. We are asking people to respond to the consultation with their concern over the generators before the deadline of 14th October.

Petra Matijevic revealed, in a story for The National, that Datavita is seeking approval to use backup generators in hot weather for non-emergency use at its so-called “green” 120-megawatt data centre– DV4– proposed at Chapelhall, North Lanarkshire. Concerns have been raised by experts over the potential lack of pollution controls. DV4 is one of four sites proposed by DataVita in Chapelhall.
‘Back-up’ generators

The diesel generators would operate in power outages, and also during hot weather, to provide extra power for cooling, when peak customer demand coincides with air temperatures above 21ºc. DataVita insists its data centres would be always powered from the grid in normal operation. But at the hyperscale data centre, which is only metres from homes in Chapelhall, hot weather will trigger the use of these generators. This is the first proposal we have seen which plans to use emergency engines during non-emergencies, although we are aware that this possibility was also raised in the planning permission for the much smaller existing data centre currently operating close to the site.

The use of diesel generators is also planned at other DataVita sites under construction, the DV1 extension and DV3 data centers, which are already under construction. DV4 is approximately 6x larger than DV1.

Worryingly, DataVita intends to install pollution control– scrubbers– on just 6 out of 12 of the generator flues at the DV1 extension. Upgrades will take place in the next three years subject to whether “capital expenditure is approved” (DataVita). This would not breach current air quality limits on the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) guidelines.

DataVita appear to be useing absolute minimum levels of technology that they need in order to pass standards of air quality. Local resident Jen Thompson, who lives 50m from the proposed hyperscale site, shared her concerns over the pollution her children could be exposed to on warmer days: “To hear that DataVita are saving money by doing less to stop the generator fumes at the DV1 site is really shocking. I’m concerned that they will be doing the same at the massive data centre that’s planned for outside our homes.”

Furthermore, an air quality consultant found that DataVita may have significantly underestimated its predictions for emissions of nitrogen dioxide during power outages, a pollutant that causes damage to health and the environment.

*Public consultation on diesel generations – please contribute*

SEPA has launched a public consultation survey about the diesel generators, which closes on Wednesday 14th October. We are urging people to respond to this as soon as possible and share your concerns about the presence of diesel generators so close to homes, that they are not all going to be fitted with scrubbers to reduce emissions, and to express concern about how often they are to be switched on for testing and how SEPA can assure residents that their health will not be affected. Developers should be using best available technology and not be allowed to get away with less when human health is at risk.

DataVita already received a £300m loan from the UK and Scottish Governments to complete the DV1 extension and DV3, both of which are currently under construction. Public money is being spent on polluting data centres and they should be required to have the best possible scrubbers on all their generator flues to protect human health.

This consultation is extremely important as we believe there will be more applications like this as more data centres come to the stage of generator permitting, and SEPA could use the results to inform decision making in future.

05/10/2026

Scotland’s climate coalition calls for proper public consultation on AI data centres
APRS have signed a letter sent from Stop Climate Chaos Scotland (SCCS) to the Public Finance Minister Hannah Mary Goodlad to call for formal consultation on guidance and a public conversation on the issue of hyperscale AI data centres. This letter comes after the Scottish Parliament voted for a pause on decisions until planning guidance and a strategic approach are in place, and calls on the Government to make clear their policy on the pause on data centre decisions.

Since the Scottish Parliament voted for the pause on data centre decisions on 16 September, there has been a further application for a 1000MW data centre at Chapelcross in Dumfries and Galloway. The Minister, in the debate on 16th September said that data centres were still free to submit applications but no decisions would be made until the guidance is in place. She said this would be before Christmas, however we believe the work on the guidance and the stratgic spatial approach must be done properly, because the public interest is so strong, and there is so much scruitiny of the process. There must be a proper consultation process on creating this guidance, including involving the community campaigners and civil society stakeholders in the scoping of the guidance, and the strategic approach. And in addition we support SCCS’s calls for a wider public conversation on hyperscale AI data centres, the need for them and

We believe that it is in the best interests of everyone that this guidance is done properly and is not rushed out. The public interest in the issue of hyperscale AI data centres is huge, and it is clear that all eyes are on the Scottish Government as they prepare the guidance and their strategic spatial approach – it is completely essential that this guidance is subject to a public consultation.

The communities who have been opposing hyperscale data centres have become the experts in data centres and their impacts, and they need to be a key stakeholder in creating the guidance.

More generally, we believe that there needs to be a public conversation around hyperscale AI data centres and the need for them.

02/10/2026

Campaigners across Europe today launched a Day of Action to Stop Dirty Data Centres and Scotland will be taking part!

So hold the date for something happening in Edinburgh, coordinated by Friends of the Earth Scotland, on Saturday 14th November - more information to follow!

Keep an eye on Friends of the Earth Scotland social media for more information.

More on the Day of Action
Civil society organisations, citizens and residents groups across Europe are planning actions to “stop dirty data centres” on 6 and 7 November.

Digital rights, environmental and community groups across the continent have joined forces, with 42 groups in ten countries planning mass demonstrations, local actions, public events, book launches and even cycle rides.

Groups from Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain and the United Kingdom have signed up, with more expected to join ahead of the days of action.

The range and creativity of actions being planned reflect the many and varied reasons people oppose the rapid and unchecked expansion of hyperscale data centres.

Data centres are warehouses for computers – large-scale infrastructure facilities that house computer servers used to store and process vast amounts of data. Their rapid expansion, driven in part by growing demand for artificial intelligence, is increasing demand for water, energy and land.

StopDirtyDataCentres.eu is calling for moratoria on large-scale data centres at EU, national and local levels until their wide-ranging environmental, democratic and social impacts have been properly scrutinised.

Campaign groups and local communities are raising concerns about pollution, water and energy use, pressure on local infrastructure, and the overriding of planning rules and local democracy amid local housing shortages and rising energy bills. Campaigners are also highlighting wider concerns linked to Artificial Intelligence (AI) produced inside these hyperscale facilities: surveillance and privacy, securitisation and militarisation including their involvement in severe human rights violations and genocide; and the impact of social media and AI on young people’s mental health.

Campaigners say fundamental questions remain about how many data centres are needed, what they are for, where they should be built, how their vast resource demands can be accommodated in a climate-constrained world and how they can actually benefit local economies and communities.

Kat Jones, Director of Action to Protect Rural Scotland (UK), said:
“This day of action has come at the right time for people in Scotland who are desperate to make their voices heard. Only this week a new application came in for a 1000MW data centre, bigger than any operating in the world at the moment in a direct challenge to Scotland's pause on planning decisions. We didn't ask for this, it's time for governments to listen to their people and not to Big Tech.

01/10/2026

The Scottish Government needs to call in the 1GW data centre proposed at Chapelcross immediately. If decisions can't be taken until there is guidance in place then how can the process of objections and decision-making by the Council take place? There must be an immediate halt until we have guidance.

Laura Moodie MSP's Scottish Green Party motion says

"That the Parliament notes the lodging of a planning application for a 1GW hyperscale data centre next to the decommissioned nuclear power plant at Chapelcross in Dumfries and Galloway; believes that the proposed facility would be the biggest in the world, surpassing the 946MW SpaceXAI Colossus 2 in Tennessee; understands with concern that 60% of the campus would be built on greenfield land and would not fully utilise the existing brownfield land on the site; further understands that the proposed data centre would use an estimated 7 terawatt hours of electricity each year, equivalent to the annual electricity usage of over two million households; welcomes the position of the Scottish Government that “no decisions on planning or consenting in relation to such applications should be made” until a wide range of strategic work has been done by the Scottish Ministers, including environmental standards and assessments, but believes that, until there is a clear and coherent national strategy from the Scottish Government, this proposal, and others across the country, cannot proceed."

We are encouraging all MSPs to support this motion, please do write to your MSPs to ask them to support it and also ask them to write to the Public Finance Minister Hannah Mary Goodlad to ask ther to make clear the Government's policy position on the pause, write to all the Councils to make this clear and and call in the Chapelhall application.

29/09/2026

If anyone has 6 minutes 27 seconds to listen to me explaining about the debate and the vote and the pause on planning applications then here it is. I hope it's informative. I'm going to try and make something shorter. But that will take a lot longer....

The main takeaway message is that we should be urgently asking our MSPs to ask the Scottish government how they are going to involve communities and the public in preparing the guidance and the strategy.

Good early news from the climate change committee. They have written to the Ministers Gillian Martin (responsible for the climate brief) and Hannah Mary Goodlad (responsible for the Planning brief) to ask (among other things) 'how stakeholders and the public will be involved in the development of national planning and spatial guidance)

And if 6 mins and 27 isn't enough info for you on data centres please go to our website news pages and catch up with the last hectic few days.

27/09/2026

There is at least 1.5GW more data centre demand for Scotland than is in planning portals and on our data centre map, and NESO has no register of data centre demand in the grid queue - front page in the National today. We need the Scottish Government to be asking NESO and the UK Government some very difficult questions. They need to demand that NESO make the grid queue for data centres public just as all generation and storage connections in the grid queue have to be on a register which is updated twice weekly.

We are asking people to email their MSPs to ask them to put this question to Ministers - how can they make a strategic plan and issue guidance if there is no definitive list of data centres that are being planned. More info on this story with references and Freedom of Information requests on our website news page

24/09/2026

Radio Scotland call in this morning. Great discussion and this is my little bit. Had a chuckle when Stephen Jardine added 'Direct' to the front of our name. Not APRS's usual style but perhaps we just need to be persuaded... 😂😂

24/09/2026

Here is a summary of where we are after all the things that happened a week ago. All data centres over 50MW are now required to have an EIA and Parliament voted for a pause on decisions until guidance is issued. This is a very significant win for the campaign. We now need to absolutely insist to our MSPs and Government that community voices must be involved in creating the guidance and the strategy that government have said they will do.

The powerful campaigning that was done across all the community campaigns, has made this happen. And the decisions of Wednesday are already having effect. On Wednesday morning four data centres with combined energy demand the same as that of Torness nuclear power station, were under active consideration by councils. Now Greenock and Chapelhall DV4 are both required to do EIAs which means, given the lack of detail in their applications, they will likely have to go back to the drawing board. Larbert will be paused while the guidance is produced. Auchtertool had already been required to go back and do an EIA.

To go from zero awareness to this in ten months is amazing. No hyperscale data centres have yet been consented in Scotland, and the ones we have in the planning system now are all paused by EIA requirements or a planning pause.

There is so much more to do, but we can celebrate where we are now. We win the campaign by recognising and celebrating the progress that has been made, getting it in all the newspapers and social media, and holding the government to account on it while we push for more, not by allowing developers to deny things have changed. A moratorium is is simply a pause in decisions and that is exactly what we have. Let's use the time we have to ensure community voices are heard strongly in the guidance and the strategy that is now being produced.

Communities now have a huge amount of shared knowledge about hyperscale data centres, we need to ensure government are involving you in the next stage.

You can read more in this piece on our website in the comments.

And if anyone felt moved to pop across to our website and join us or give us a wee donation to help us in the next phase of the campaign that will make a huge difference to this tiny charity. 🙏