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Scottish Government urged to intervene in Edinburgh AI data centre plans

 THE Scottish Government has been urged to intervene after council
officials ruled that an environmental impact assessment for a huge
artificial intelligence data centre is not required.

Edinburgh City Council
is currently considering plans for a new AI data centre on the site of the
former RBS headquarters in South Gyle, near Edinburgh Airport. Shelborn
Drummond Ltd, an offshoot of Shelborn Asset Management, is behind the plans
for the “Green Data Centre”.

We previously told how the Shelborn data
centre, and another proposed by Apatura near to Heriot-Watt University,
would demand the equivalent amount of energy as building five cities the
same size as the capital within its boundaries. The revelation about the
vast amount of electricity the sites will consume has sparked concerns from
environmental campaigners, and had previously raised concerns that there
would be no requirement for the firms behind the plans to carry out an
environmental impact assessment (EIA).

A screening opinion published on
Friday December 18, by a senior planner at the local authority, ruled that
an EIA would not be required. Action to Protect Rural Scotland (APRS) said
the Shelborn data centre will use the same amount of energy as a quarter of
a million households, and it was “gobsmacking” that the impact on the
local environment would not be taken into consideration.

 The National 22nd Dec 2025, https://www.thenational.scot/news/25715123.scottish-government-urged-intervene-edinburgh-ai-data-centre/

December 26, 2025 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | technology, UK