Edinburgh AI data centre march demands public consultation | Magica
Thousands march in Edinburgh for a say over AI data centres
Editorial Team
••📖6 min read
Thousands protested against proposed AI data centres in Scotland as ministers prepare new planning guidance, putting public participation and the scale of electricity demand at the centre of the dispute.
Thousands marched to the Scottish Parliament seeking public consultation before AI data centres are approved.
The proposed expansion could dwarf Scotland’s existing facilities, but grid requests are not a forecast of electricity consumption.
Ministers promise guidance by year-end; existing rules require notification and environmental scrutiny of larger projects.
Thousands of people marched through Edinburgh on Saturday, 14 November, against proposed AI data centres across Scotland, demanding public involvement before decisions are made about their construction.
The demonstration comes ahead of new Scottish Government planning guidance promised before the end of the year. At issue is both whether communities can influence the national rollout and whether individual projects can justify their demands on electricity, water and land.
An estimated 6,000 people marched down the Royal Mile to the Scottish Parliament. The attendance estimate’s method was not specified. Campaigners came from Cockenzie, Dunbar, Larbert, Ravenscraig, North Ayrshire, Aberdeenshire and the Borders.
Campaigners outside Holyrood, pictured in the Scottish Greens’ announcement supporting the Edinburgh march. This photograph shows a separate demonstration. Photo: Scottish Greens. Source: Scottish Greens.
Community objections become a national campaign
Friends of the Earth Scotland, the environmental campaign group organising the march, called for consultation before any approvals. Community campaigns, climate organisations, trade unions and anti-poverty charities supported the event, part of a European wave of protests that also coincided with the global day of action around the COP31 climate talks.
Kim Cairns, a campaigner with Say No To Chapelcross AI Data Centre, described concerns about construction noise, road closures, access and noise during operation in an interview at the demonstration. The proposed development is in Dumfries and Galloway.
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Editorial Team
Friends of the Earth Scotland senior campaigner Kim Pratt argued that technology companies would take the profits while people in Scotland bore environmental costs and higher energy bills. These are warnings about proposed developments, rather than measured effects of completed facilities. Kat Jones, director of countryside campaign organisation Action to Protect Rural Scotland, said communities and civil society needed a role in discussions about the sector’s future.
The Scottish Greens, a political party represented in the Scottish Parliament, backed a pause in new hyperscale developments. The party said a national conversation should consider whether the centres are needed and what conditions should apply if they are built.
The scale is proposed capacity, not power already consumed
Data centres house computing and data-storage equipment, as defined in the government’s planning direction. The proposed Scottish expansion represents a substantial change in scale: the largest existing facility is thought to be DataVita’s 12MW site in Airdrie, while Chapelcross is proposed at 1,000MW, according to the report on the march. Those figures describe power capacity, not annual electricity use.
September figures attributed to the National Energy System Operator in the demonstration report put 28 Scottish data-centre proposals, representing 8.9GW, in the queue for grid connections. The report described that requested power as more than twice Scotland’s current winter peak electricity demand.
The campaign group’s own release uses a different tally: 23 proposals totalling 9.1GW, against a current peak demand of 5GW. The sources do not explain the difference in project counts or capacity. Neither tally establishes that all projects will receive permission, connect to the grid or draw their full stated power simultaneously. They also do not establish how household bills would change.
Danny Quinn, managing director of DataVita, the operator of the existing Airdrie centre, argued ahead of the march that AI would become critical to developed economies. He said countries and regions needed their own facilities to avoid relying on services consumed from abroad. His company has a commercial stake in the sector whose expansion is being challenged.
Reported power capacity at Airdrie and proposed capacity at Chapelcross. These figures describe capacity, not annual electricity consumption. Source: BBC.
Chapelcross shows the development case and its limits
Chapelcross is also a land-reuse project. The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, the public body responsible for safely dismantling the UK’s earliest nuclear sites, announced in November 2025 that it had agreed heads of terms with CX Power to support a green-energy hub beside the former nuclear power station.
CX Power brings together GA Consultants and Global Mutual Properties Limited. The authority cited planning and private-finance expertise as reasons for its involvement. The wider masterplan includes hydrogen production, advanced manufacturing and AI-enabled data centres. The authority presented the privately funded hub as a source of several hundred high-value jobs.
The announcement described potential for a 1GW data-centre campus targeting zero-carbon energy operation, drawing on regional renewable supplies and using cooling technology intended to avoid burdening water resources. Those are development ambitions, not evidence that the proposed campus has secured the power or achieved its environmental targets.
Scottish Government directions introduced ministerial notification and environmental assessment requirements for qualifying data-centre developments exceeding 50MW. Source: Scottish Government notification direction.
What the year-end guidance must resolve
The Scottish Government says it is developing a strategy to maximise public benefit, alongside the forthcoming guidance. Its position is that the planning system already provides safeguards: Scottish innovation minister Alyn Smith has argued that comparisons with poorly located overseas facilities do not necessarily apply to Scotland.
An August notification direction requires planning authorities to alert ministers within seven days of validating applications for data centres exceeding 50MW. It covers applications for permission in principle as well as construction permission, and applies to applications already under consideration. The stated purpose is oversight of the pipeline and implications for wider infrastructure.
A separate environmental assessment direction, effective from 17 September, requires environmental impact assessment for new centres exceeding 50MW. The legal text covers the specified industrial-estate and urban-development categories under the assessment regulations. Other centres remain subject to case-by-case consideration.
The accompanying letter identifies landscape, biodiversity, water, noise and potential air-quality impacts. It says closed-loop cooling can reduce cooling-water requirements and that fossil-fuel use would add emissions not accounted for in the government’s Climate Change Plan. It also argues that considering environmental factors early can improve designs and reduce later planning delays.
These measures provide scrutiny of applications; they do not settle the marchers’ demand for a say in the overall rollout. The next test is whether the year-end guidance explains how communities can influence decisions, how cumulative electricity and water demands will be assessed, and what evidence of public benefit will be required from developments seeking approval.
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