Current status: Answered by Ivan McKee on 28 October 2025
To ask the Scottish Government, regarding any implications for its energy strategy, what impact it anticipates that the growth of AI and data centres will have on the (a) energy grid and (b) electricity demand in Scotland; whether it plans to introduce specific planning guidance for energy-intensive developments, such as AI data centres, and what strategic planning is being undertaken to accommodate any infrastructure demands of AI technologies, including data centres and high-performance computing.
There is an opportunity for Scotland to become a leader in green data centres given our capacity to generate energy from renewable sources.
In 2023, 70% of electricity generated in Scotland was from renewable sources – a marked increase compared to less than one-third (32%) a decade previously. As of June 2025, there is an estimated capacity of 76.5 GW of renewable energy projects, including storage, in the planning pipeline in Scotland. This means there is ample opportunity to use excess renewable generation for data centres, helping to reduce the impact and taxpayer costs of network constraints, with £390 million paid to Scottish wind farm operators in 2024 alone. As the National Energy System Operator (NESO) recognised in its 2025 Future Energy Scenarios, up to a fifth of Great Britain’s future data centre demand could be based in Scotland.
While we have no immediate plans to introduce planning guidance for energy-intensive developments, strategic planning is being undertaken by the Scottish Government to accommodate any infrastructure demands of AI technologies, such as AI data centres. Together with the UK and Welsh Governments, we have jointly commissioned NESO to produce a Strategic Spatial Energy Plan (SSEP) for Great Britain. The SSEP will spatially optimise a specified volume of flexible data centre demand (1-2GW). This will indicate where opportunities for energy system benefits exist, such as co-location of renewables and data centres, supporting the development of government policy on the spatial location of data centre demand. The Regional Energy Strategic Plan for Scotland will further enable the coordinated development of the energy system across multiple vectors.