Hundreds protest outside the Scottish Parliament against proposed AI dat... youtube.com/shorts/lI5eNXdL3… via @YouTube

‼️LAST CALL ‼️Objections to the Auchtertool/Cato data centre close TOMORROW, 2 July. ‼️This 600MW campus would use roughly the same energy as HALF of Scotland’s households 20% of the country’s entire annual energy use. For one data centre. ‼️It takes 5 minutes to object. Your comment becomes part of the official planning record officers must read and consider it before deciding. ‼️Object directly here: planning.fife.gov.uk/online/… 📄 ‼️Full background: aprs.scot/auchtertool-dc/ ‼️If you’ve been meaning to do this, today’s the day. Tomorrow’s too late. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 How to submit

‼️Ten communities. One message. Campaigns from Auchtertool, Hermiston, Larbert, Dunbar, the Gyle, Hunterston, Bishopriggs, Chapelhall, Longformacus/Lammermuirs and Hurlford gathered outside the Scottish Parliament to demand a moratorium on hyperscale AI data centres. This is what a coalition looks like. Scotland is being asked to host a wave of hyperscale AI data centres, freeports, special economic zones and offshore wind infrastructure all at the same time, all under planning frameworks that were never designed for this scale, and all without an updated national energy strategy since 2017. Communities facing these applications have no statutory right of appeal, no mandatory environmental impact assessment, and no enforceable definition of what ‘green’ actually means in planning law. The Scottish Government is processing each application as if it exists in isolation, while the cumulative demand on Scotland’s land, water, grid and communities is anything but isolated. This isn’t a planning problem. It’s a governance failure.” People want to point fingers to London but that’s only half of the story The SNP along with all other Parties in the relevant responsibilities are denying communities an updated energy plan that strengthens devolved planning powers that would protect them because both Westminster & ScotGov WANT inward global investment Mandelson style and have made communities collateral damage to get it. Thats the real takeaway from all of the threads. The irrefutable argument Scotland has a live, accelerating pipeline of 24 hyperscale data centre proposals requiring up to 6,000MW more than 1.5 times the country’s entire peak electricity demand being assessed against a planning framework that predates the technology it is meant to regulate, with no binding definition of the term the government uses to justify approval, no mandatory environmental assessment for most sites, no community right of appeal, no water standard, and no published account of what any of this will cost in grid capacity, household bills, or climate impact. The government has been asked, formally and in writing, to pause. It has a direct, recent precedent for doing exactly that. It has declined not because it disputes the facts, but because it has chosen not to act on them. That is not a position. It is an absence of one. 1. THE SCALE IS NOT MARGINAL IT IS DESTABILISING 24 proposals. Up to 6,000MW. Scotland’s current peak demand: approximately 4,000MW. This was placed on the official parliamentary record by Ross Greer MSP on 18 June 2026 and was not disputed by the First Minister. This is not a planning question about individual sites. It is a question about whether Scotland’s electricity system can absorb a demand increase larger than the system itself, decided one application at a time, with no body responsible for assessing the total. 2. THE GOVERNMENT’S OWN DEFINITION IS CIRCULAR At FMQs on 18 June 2026, the First Minister defined a “green data centre” as one that “has been approved with due account taken of the environmental implications.” A green data centre is one that has been approved as a green data centre. There is no threshold, no metric, no standard capable of being failed. This is not a definition. It is the absence of one, dressed in the language of one! 3. THE EVIDENCE ALREADY EXISTS AND IT IS ALARMING This is not a hypothetical risk. The developer’s own Environmental Impact Assessment for the Larbert data centre required because Larbert, unlike most sites, needed one found that routine generator testing alone would produce 288 tonnes of nitrogen dioxide and nitrous oxide annually, and that nearby homes, a hospital, and a nursery could be exposed to nitrogen dioxide levels of up to 8,800 micrograms per cubic metre 44 times the safe hourly limit. This would rank a single “green” data centre among Scotland’s top 10 industrial polluters, ahead of Mossmorran and Peterhead.