Summary
- Livingston MP Gregor Poynton has asked ministers for an account of delivery against Scotland's 2021 green data centre plan.
- Scotland's 2026 AI strategy still commits the government to defining the characteristics of a green data centre and progressing heat reuse and renewable-power opportunities.
- The policy gap is being exposed by live planning disputes and political pressure over hyperscale power demand.
The Scottish Government is facing renewed pressure to account for progress against its five-year-old green data centre strategy as large proposed campuses test the relationship between investment policy, planning, electricity demand, water, and environmental standards.
Gregor Poynton, Labour MP for Livingston, has written to Business and Fair Work Minister Tom Arthur seeking an update on the Green Datacentres and Digital Connectivity Vision and Action Plan published in March 2021.
That plan set an ambition for Scotland to become a leading zero-carbon, cost-competitive location for data hosting, using renewable generation and international connectivity to attract investment from edge facilities through to hyperscale infrastructure.
Five years later, the government’s 2026-2031 AI strategy still includes an action to publish guidance on the factors prevalent in a green data centre. It also commits ministers to promoting Scotland’s renewable power, connectivity, and water infrastructure, identifying heat-offtake opportunities, and progressing data centre investment.
Planning cases are forcing policy into detail
The absence of a settled definition has become more visible as major applications reach local and national planning processes. Scotland is no longer dealing only with an abstract ambition to attract digital infrastructure; councils and ministers are being asked to judge projects carrying hundreds of megawatts of potential electrical demand.
DataCentral reported in July that the SNP’s National Council backed calls for a temporary hyperscale moratorium, although the party decision is not binding on the government. Opposition has also built around individual projects, particularly where energy use, scale, and environmental claims are contested.
Earlier this month, a planning appeal for a proposed 210MW Edinburgh data centre was halted pending a full Environmental Impact Assessment. That decision illustrates the difference between describing a project as sustainable and demonstrating its effects through the planning process.
Other proposals are substantially larger. The planned Cato project in Fife has been presented at around £5 billion and 600MW, generating more than 1,200 objections according to recent reporting. Projects at that scale can no longer be assessed purely as commercial property or technology developments because their electricity, construction, water, transport, and grid requirements become regional infrastructure questions.
The 2026 strategy sets tests still to be defined
Scotland’s new AI strategy says that by 2031 the country should be recognised as a leader in sustainable data centre development, with renewable energy supply, water-resilient design, heat reuse, distributed computing, and newer energy technologies incorporated into developments.
Those objectives establish a direction but leave technical thresholds to be resolved. A workable green-data-centre framework would have to address how power is sourced, whether renewable claims are based on annual contracts or physical additional supply, how water use is measured, what efficiency metrics are expected, and when heat reuse is practical rather than merely designed as an option.
Planning authorities also need to consider the infrastructure outside the site boundary. A facility may have efficient cooling and a low reported PUE but still depend on major transmission reinforcement, backup generation, new substations, or energy infrastructure whose impacts sit elsewhere in the system.
The government’s 2021 plan already connected digital investment with renewable electricity and fibre. Its 2026 AI strategy goes further by acknowledging water resilience, heat reuse, sovereign infrastructure, and the need for timely access to power and grid capacity.
That evolution reflects how quickly the sector has changed. AI infrastructure has increased the size and density of proposed campuses, while the political debate around power costs and planning has become sharper. Criteria that appeared adequate for smaller colocation facilities can be difficult to apply to a proposed site drawing hundreds of megawatts.
Poynton is asking the government to set out what investment and economic benefits have been delivered since 2021 and how the commitments in the original plan have progressed.
The next policy step will therefore be judged less on another statement of ambition than on whether Scotland establishes standards that planning authorities, communities, developers, utilities, and investors can actually apply. With several large projects already in the system, the definition of a green data centre is moving from strategy language into a question of which developments receive permission to build.
