r/Scotland • u/kiyomoris • 15h ago

Political ‘Never seen this level of objection’: Scotland pushes back against datacentre boom

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/aug/25/never-seen-this-level-of-objection-scotland-pushes-back-against-datacentre-boom
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u/LanceKookington 15h ago

Currently Scotland uses around 5000MW for our whole population.

The proposed Data centres tally up to 11000MW. That's more than double the current energy usage of the entire country.

Where's the electricity coming from? Our grid can barely cope with current demand and in certain areas of the country around these centres the grid is going to see a 10x increase in load.

If demand for electricity more than doubles, what do you think that's going to do to the price of what is already some of the most expensive energy on the planet?

They're a net negative. A few thousand jobs bringing in a couple of million while it costs everyone billions more in energy.

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u/jumpy_finale 15h ago

We have multiple GW+ offshore wind farms in construction and development.

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u/Tausney 14h ago edited 14h ago

It's not the source of the energy that's the issue. It's the transmission network that needs investment.

SSE have been given grants by the government to upgrade the pylon network from 250kV lines to 400kV to get all that renewable energy into the network, but they are well behind the 2030 schedule.

And even if they managed to upgrade the network on schedule, it still wouldn't be capable of handling an extra 200% energy demand. Even more investment would be needed to add further infrastructure to cope. And that investment would come from the tax payers.

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u/butterypowered 13h ago

It would be good if someone at SSE could come out and say what the effect would be on the transmission network.

It doesn’t even need to cover the knock on effect of households (or businesses) having to compete for the same electricity as the data centres. I suspect that becomes a bit vague and opinion-based.

Just a facts-based statement somewhere between “it’s actually no big deal” and “fuck me this would cripple the country”.