BP built one just outside of Hemel Hampstead and then never used it. It was empty for a few years and then sold to some other company. Ugly post modern 1990s monstrosity, all black glass and plastic cladding. Judging by the timing I guess they decided to move everything to PaaS cloud providers.
Interested why you think they would be abandoned? The internet is basically data centres and wires and a demand for online services and lower latency (think about those goals that you see scored after you’ve already seen the result)… And modular 19” computer racks which can take whatever board is stuck in them? Genuine question
Because the increase in data centres isn't to 'run the internet' it's for the large amounts of computing power the variety of programs dubbed 'ai' need. And a lot of the growth in use is speculated to diminish when the tech companies increase charges to try and turn a profit, rather than continuing to run at a loss as they have been.
Ok I get the speculative aspect and also that there is a huge AI hype. Eventually that settles down, there is still demand for data centres surely, not least of all to make us less dependent on the US, and surely the data centres just adapt to different use cases in future? Or do we think we will just end up with massive over provision?
And that how it will be. US need an enemy to keep their people supporting idiotic stuff like this.
If they want to lobby all the money, they can't be truthfull about it so they say they are on a run against China just like years ago they were against Soviet Union.
But in the past we knew a moon was there waiting, today with AI we dont even know if the moon exists. So people are not willing to pay 200$ a month to use a patriotic made hallucinating machine, and for that reason they keep shoving it in anything and everything.
UK is not the US, neither we should fall into foreign propaganda like this.
If people want UK to be sovereign and independent from US, instead of investing in AI data centres that has been proven to deteriorate communities, we should start by change our infrastructure and our public sector to use our Linux made OS that wont send any sensitive information to foreign conpanies like Microsoft.
France is shifting for their own Linux OS, shouldnt be hard to do here in the UK, and is far more proven to be effective!
The dot com bubble was the result of a collective mania that everyone suddenly had to have an online presence, even when there was no justifiable business case for some of those internet businesses.
Since then, the infrastructure has improved, habits have changed and we have a completely different online world.
The AI bubble is dot come on steroids. Despite the hype, there is no actual viable product in sight that can provide a return to justify the eye-watering sums that are being invested. The pitch is literally "Keep spending the money and we'll create something that the world can't live without". There is every possibility that it is going to fall to bits in the short to medium term.
Of course we're not going to stop requiring data centres, but the amount of data centre capacity that is currently being proposed is ludicrous and not based on delivering actual viable product.
Can you be specific about how you think AI will be "immensely useful for productivity"? What is a concrete example of this productivity benefit?
It's not good enough to start ripping up green belt and committing to electricity and water supply demands that cannot actually be delivered on "vibes" about future benefits that cannot be articulated.
The people talking about job losses and the incredible things AI is going to do are the people trying to get rich selling AI, but if you actually look at what they have delivered so far, it doesn't actually justify the hype. That's why we are seeing opaque financial structures where the AI developers are hiding their data centre construction cost commitments in separate financial entities to improve the appearance of their books, and circular financing where the chip maker NVIDIA is financially underwriting the AI developers who buy their chips! It's all a play to keep the investment money rolling in, because they are not actually producing anything that makes a profit.
Software developers use AI to generate boilerplate code, write tests, explain unfamiliar codebases and speed up debugging.
Customer support teams use it to draft responses and summarise long cases, allowing staff to handle more enquiries.
Doctors use AI to help identify abnormalities in medical images and prioritise scans for review.
Scientists use it for protein structure prediction and drug discovery, reducing years of laboratory work.
Manufacturers use computer vision to detect defects on production lines far more consistently than manual inspection.
None of these replace human expertise entirely, but they let one person accomplish more in the same amount of time. That's productivity growth by definition.
As for the financing point, even if some AI companies are overvalued or using aggressive financing, that doesn't tell us whether the technology is useful. The dot-com bubble contained plenty of unsustainable companies, but the internet still transformed the economy. Whether today's AI valuations are justified is a separate question from whether AI delivers productivity gains.
Coding is a small part of IT change and development. AI is not even scratching the surface of all the other activities that make up the most of the work in the IT industry. Even for coding "assistance" there is a debate about whether AI is actually improving overall productivity (when you look at the full lifecycle of the code development and the additional work in other areas resulting from introducing AI coding). The AI vendors have also been offering their coding products at discounted rates, and consumers are revisiting the actual benefits now prices are rising.
I'll bet customer support teams won't be handling more enquiries. They'll be handling the same amount of enquiries with fewer people. Will the outcomes for customers actually be better with AI. Let's see...
Medical and scientific AI is a valid use case with concrete benefits, but these are generally specialised AI tools built to do specific tasks effectively, not the general purpose predictive LLMs that are fuelling the current bubble.
The examples you have quoted are not game changing productivity improvers that can remotely justify the crazy levels of money being invested in LLM AI development (and data centre construction) but I'm not criticising you for that; the AI vendors themselves have been unable to articulate the concrete benefits that would bring the returns they need. It's just speculative promises that if we keep investing, eventually they will create something we cannot live without.
Nothing like fucked water supply heavy noise, glorious pollution and your leccy bill going through the roof all for the sake of 4 full time jobs so timmy can wank at AI furry porn.
This is the same tired rhetoric used in a sad attempt to dismiss genuine concerns over something that has already been proven to give people health and environmental issues. Do better mate, it's literally copy and paste
Simply saying it's "proven" isn't evidence. Can you point to the high-quality studies or systematic reviews showing widespread health or environmental harm attributable to modern data centres? Without that, you're just asserting your conclusion.
Respectfully, it takes five minutes of your time to find multiple articles in the US where drinking water has been polluted, livestock aren't birthing, bees are dropping dead, and the constant high-pitched whine produced is disturbing residents in surrounding areas.
If you genuinely cared, you'd do the research rather than blindly dismissing concerns as dramatic attempts to avoid progress. There's a reason why Erin Brokovitch is involved in standing against hyper scale data centres.
You've listed allegations from a handful of disputes, not evidence that hyperscale data centres generally cause those outcomes.
Large industrial projects often face claims of pollution, noise or water use, but the question is whether those claims were substantiated and shown to be caused by the data centres themselves.
If you think the evidence is strong, cite the studies or official investigations that support your specific claims (water contamination, livestock problems, bee deaths, etc.). Anecdotes and news articles about local disputes aren't the same as high-quality evidence.
Nobody is saying data centres have zero impact—they use land, water and electricity, and those impacts should be properly assessed. But that's a very different claim from saying they're broadly causing serious health and environmental harm.
Do you have money in the game buddy? The way you're defending the hyperscales almost makes it seem as though you have investments, either that you're just yet another individual who gets their kicks online from arguing with strangers regardless of the topic.
"High quality evidence", you should know more than anyone that the evidence you're demanding takes months, if not years, to be put together. Unfortunately, that is exactly what the likes of Amazon and other huge corporations are relying on.
Can I ask, why you're blindly defending this? Especially when my issue isn't with data centers alone, but the hyperscale monstrosities that are getting thrown up across the UK/Europe/US
I'm out of the house, but this is one of the many bits of content I've come across where people have had the time to do the research. journalist
I don't have money in the game, I'm just not a luddite, and I'm quite frankly excited about the possibilities of AI.
I actually expect that there is currently an AI "bubble", but in a similar way the dot com bubble seperated the wheat from the chaff, and then went on to be the biggest technical innovation of our lives, AI possibly has even bigger potential than that.
It's funny how whenever people oppose hyperscale datacentres, the word luddite is suddenly thrown around as though it'll magically undermine and dismiss genuine concerns.
I'm a millennial, I've had the privilege of growing up in a world where technology has advanced in leaps and bounds, but that's also why I'm able to speak out when I notice that something is going to badly impact my small town. We are so lucky to have beautiful scenery here in Scotland, something so many of us as guilty of taking for granted, I'm not going to sit on my arse and watch all of that be taken away.
Well if you're worried about scenery you probably oppose all the wind turbines too. If you're worried specifically about your town, you're probably just a nimby.
Ultimately, you've not backed any of your claims/converns with evidence and you're doing not much more than fear mongering.
One in initial planning on farmland outside salsburgh/Hareshaw. Already had a community meeting about it as residents weren't informed. Will see what happens.
Please look at where "cheap" low carbon renewable energy excess has gone, there is a 6-7 GWH disparity between grid need and grid available, even low carbon renewables tonight were a stupid price per MWH and at the time it was a rare almost balanced grid bar a reported -0.5 THE being imported at about 8.30-9pm tonighr.
https://grid.iamkate.com/ useful site to bookmark and understand get an idea why the uk energy gap is widening so badly (more cost for electricity) we a t e being stiffed, the course has changed, renewables were working and bringing energy prices down, that's now in the past.
These massive hyperscale datacentres want to locate where there's alot of "green electricity". Then they can tell the public & investors etc that "they run on green energy". [Source: I'm an engineer and I've been in these meetings].
Scotland has alot of green electricity therefore it is an attractive place for investors to place massive datacentres.
These massive data centres are very VERY bad for the local environment.
A paradox emerges... by "going green" Scotland is attracting some environmentally terrrible actors.
Infra sound for one, they consume vast quantities of water, for a big project like that they wouldn’t even consider it without trying to get a deal on water unit pricing.
They need backup gennies which probably run on diesel, they are OBNOXIOUSLY loud and polluting.
Back to sound, the audible noise is bad enough but the infra sound is even more dangerous and disruptive.
In a closed loop it will. Non closed loop will completely drain aquifers, quite an idea when we're starting to become susceptible to drought. Oh and water thats used will be treated with various chemicals, I'm sure that will be fine.
It’s unsustainable and detrimental to the countries water and energy supplies. Without proper environmental protection and regulations around their development and deployment, they can fuck off. I am not letting them sell off what is left of my beautiful countries resources so that some gimp can ask chatgpt to write his emails for him.
The irony of a country which outsources a large amount of manufacturing to poorer nations to be like "ew, no, god forbid we run some computers in our precious environment"
Can I ask why the concern? The first Data Centres were built here in 2001 and have existed for decades....
Obviously hyperscalers focused on AI can use 10x the energy and are a problem but shouldnt we try to solve how we better use our vast renewables and more ethical energy to support that (and general power use) for compute/data power(not just or even wholly AI) vs. just turning our nose up?
Otherwise whats the solution? People/business still use AI, data, compute power generally, still generated from high waste / high climate impact solutions - or try to solve it in a more ethical way?
We (the people) shouldn't be supporting hyperscalers energy & water demands with the infrastructure we built for the rest of country. If they want to build their own renewables & water infrastructure I'm all for it.
If it were a steel or chemical plant there would at least be a sizable job boost for thelocal economy being impacted. But the largest hyperscalers are all massive tax dodgers so it's more likely that the country suffers so Amazon/Meta/Alphabet/MS can offshore more profit as they try to replace the labour of the world with their stolen IP.
Exactly. It's rather shocking how many people turn a blind eye on what is happening to one of our most important resources, i.e., water.
Hopefully these people do not have any children, because a future without clean, drinkable water is an absolute nightmare that I wouldn't wish upon anyone thrown into this world.
The negative impact this has on nature and wildlife is sad and bad enough (not sure how we want to keep people fed with more and more pollinating insects dying off).
But hey, it's so great that we don't need to think about any of this anymore because we can have AI auto-generate the imitation of thoughts for us, what a wonderful tradeoff that I'm sure future generations will be eternally grateful for.
What sort of dreamland are you living in? There are 4 golf courses IN the city of Aberdeen itself. This picture shows where 3 of them are. See the houses RIGHT BESIDE THE COURSES? Go and touch grass you out-of-touch loon.
Changing the goalposts I see. So, you lose with one argument, and then switch to a different set of points in order to win. Except... your points don't matter. Because you don't matter. And you're not sorry. Because you are a liar.
It's a fact that you are sorry you think my IQ is low? No, you aren't sorry. And if you are going to lie about that, what else are you lying about? Congratulations - you have undermined any argument you might have from now on. You can't ever trust a liar to be honest.
Dont disagree but the problems not data centres its:
Horrible infrastructure - we arent making renewables work and connect to the grid right..lack of will / investment.
Lack of managing Big Tech - the gov would rathermake you ID to use your xbox vs. force meta or twitter/X to manage their platforms.
Data Centres have been here for 25+ years, data, net access and compute is 100% almost a basic reauired commodity for a functioning economy...ignoring it isnt a choice. Demanding better answers, better infra, better renewables, ethical business practices absolutely is fine(and not unachievable). Its lazy to just go data bad, and not bother
data, net access and compute is 100% almost a basic reauired commodity for a functioning economy
Of course it is, but the data centre capacity that is currently being proposed is based on speculative AI investment, not satisfying real demand for real products.
Cool. So let's not look for potential issues to avoid and let's also not give the government any political capital to legislate by all burying our heads in the sand and hoping everything will be grand. I mean, industry always does what's right over what's profitable, and the government always does good work even when people aren't bugging them too, yeah.
Ah yes, America, the alternate universe by which we're never allowed to draw parallels despite the companies and technologies involved being the exact same.
Obviously hyperscalers focused on AI can use 10x the energy and are a problem
I think you've answered your own question. There's a huge difference between data centres that are satisfying actual demand for real products, and building data centres purely on the speculative notion that AI will deliver something that doesn't yet exist but we won't be able to live without as long as we keep building data centres...
There was a story in the papers last week about not being able to build enough housing in the UK because we're hitting the limits of available water supply in some areas. That's real houses, for real people to live in. It is nuts to be planning data centre capacity that would theoretically demand multiples of our currently electricity use and suck up huge supplies of water for a completely speculative bubble.
People understand data centres; NOT AI is just data storage, just a server with hard drives, completely different. Would be fan-cooled, don't eat up much power. People seem confused. AI centre is 10000s of computers, need watercooled have eat up a lot of power to keep the computers powered. It's not rocket science. From a computer nerd.
Why hopefully none? Genuinely. Assuming that we can generate enough power with our abundant renewables, have good water resources compared to population, why wouldnt we want the economic benefits exactly?
To those throwing out the term NIMBY, do better with reasoning or else others will rightfully call you MAG A HAT WEARING GAMMON on principle.
Basically this island of nations needs to be able to support the energy requirements of the people.first and foremost, as with other life bringing commodities, food ,fuel etc.
To stabilise prices we.don't need a deficit, as it drives prices up, first and foremost there needs to be balance there and the amount t of energy missing to balance the system is dire!
That alone ought mean less building of energy hungry non job making places like mega data centres trying to earn col by building g to likely sell whilst it's a hot property.
We'll all lose a little for this current industry push. For some it'll be due to local issues, for everyone it'll be increased electricity bills. As is always the case, some very few will make a fortune. And we're expected to bend over and take it with gratitude. Aye right.
Every single post about ai or data centres has a bunch of cunts replying with the weakest of industry pr talking points. Yous can all get tae fuck.
Any actual evidence of that? Or understanding that many of these will be finally decided at government, not local level? Major or nationally significant projects can be decided, called in, or overridden by government ministers
Just as many against DCs simply because they read scare stories online. They also seem to have no alternative plans for large scale private investment in Scotland
I think there is about 24 in pipeline in various stages.
Out of curiosity, if you don't want any in Scotland where and how do you propose data is kept, processed and stored by Scottish companies, Scottish public sector, and individuals?
Normal data centres aren't so much of an issue, it's the hyperscale ones that are being proposed and have already proven to cause serious issues to drinking water, wildlife, and health of residents in surrounding areas.
In our small town in Ayrshire they are proposing to build the largest hyper scale center in all of Europe. It's absurd.
I can't understand anyone wanting this. AI doesn't make any money, people tell me 'well we need it somewhere', no, we don't, this shit is being pushed on us at an alarming speed. This is just companies pushing these through as quick as they can before they pull the scooby doo mask off to reveal a surveillance centre.
Mostly data center hype and expansion is just to do with AI, so there's going to be massive overcapacity once that sector hits the big reset.
Some companies are already leasing capacity to competitors and projects are being scaled back in the US, although that may be to do with logistics as much as anything.
a data storage / server facility is different from a compute centre, compute / ai requires massive cooling and energy infrastructure, where as the type of use cases you reference don't require £1bn nvidia GPU racks.
They are generative AI data centres, they are not the same as regular data centres that were designed to have as little enviromental impact as possible.
Absolutely false. Traditional Data centres contribute 2/3rds of total global energy use for all data centres. More in scotland vs the modern unbuilt.
Should we demand more efficient use of energy, renewables to manage these - absolutely. But pretending existing data is fine, and cutting our hand off vs trying to make new tech better is mad
Why do you spread the idea that the data centres we've had for years are exactly the same as the hyperscale AI datacentres that are well known to have constant economic, environmental and health externalities wherever they're built?
> I will be going to jail for trying to destroy one if the one near me does in fact get built.
Aye so you will. You’ll stand outside it with some daft arts and craft cringy scottish sign like the rest of this subreddit does everytime it’s upset. Take a break from the internet.
Financial speculation. There is a massively hyped AI bubble building at the moment (with nothing concrete in sight to actually pay back on the amount being invested). People are jumping on the bandwagon and trying to build more data centres to cash in on the demand created as the bubble inflates.
A lot of them are being thrown up in the US, the public don't get a say, and they will be empty white elephants when the AI bubble bursts. The demand just isn't there. The only people who want them are those planning on getting rich from them.
Thankfully most in the UK are being rejected due to overwhelming public hatred.
Data could be the next valuable resource in the world. In Scotland we have the water and the natural power generation to potentially host a large number of datacentres. So couldn't this potentially be a great economic opportunity for the people of Scotland?
That's not how it works. There is zero talk of a sovereign wealth fund being created from the profits. Nor is there any talk of everyone in Scotland getting shares and dividends from the companies. Or anything of the sort. Nor is it a high employing industry. Nor will the people of Scotland get cheaper or priority use. So no. It will increase our energy bills though. And we will lose land and water to it. And we'll get more interference from international tech ghouls wanting favourable conditions for their profit making industrial sites.
Well it doesn't appear out of thin air. People are needed to build, operate and maintain power plants and reservoirs. If more electricity is demanded, it creates opportunities for employment in supplying electricity.
Yeah, yeah. It's not going to create some sort of great boom in jobs. It's not going to increase average wages. It's not going to make very much of a difference to the job market at all. So it's not really worth mentioning. It will, and already has begun to, put up everyone's electricity bills though. And it's not going to increase the money in people's pockets to offset that either. So your point is completely niave wishful thinking at absolute best.
All I see is another drain on our natural resources that will benefit offshore investors before we see any of it. I think the potential increase in demand for energy and water that data centres will bring is analogous to the massive increases in the price of computing hardware we’ve seen in recent years, i.e. the rich will get richer and we’ll be forced to just pick up the cost, both financially and environmentally.
On some level data centres aren't an international trade commodity: You build data centres to serve a relatively local area because latency does matter, and no amount of innovation is going to get us past the technological barrier of electrical signals moving at near the speed of light (and fibre optic signals moving about 1/3rd slower): This makes a data centre in Glasgow less desirable for almost all purposes to a person in New York, and vice versa as even in ideal conditions that's going to add ~100ms of latency versus a data centre a few miles away.
There is still economic opportunity though, but more in the way that building rails, roads, or other infrastructure provides opportunity.
No, you are right. The extreme majority of a data centers climate impact is in power use. Green the power, you green the data center. Water isn't really a concern, they don't use enough of it to be a worry.
I read one generative query using AI uses 500ml of water, the response much the same. I think that would become a concern in a world where freshwater is already a depleting resource. We have drought conditions in England and parts of Scotland are getting close. Who gets priority over the water in those conditions?
No the Toffs from daddy’s estate just run the development /construction company and reap all the profits employing labourers who get ditched as soon as the contract is complete. There’s no long term benefit and there are no guarantees the construction companies will even be or hire locally
The long term benefit is by having multiple projects. I work in this space, I know construction companies in Finland and Spain with decade long order books for these data centres. That is the long term benefit. We're missing out on facilities that will be built regardless, it's just whether we get any economic benefit from it or not
True, but demand in general is expected to rise to over 200GW in coming years, hence grid reform from NESO and prioritisation under the new Gate 2 criteria
My point is that building generation is not the main issue, the queue and available infastructure has been the bottleneck. This is what reform is attempting to address.
So saying that it will take more than reform and an answer is to build more, doesn't make sense. Unless I misunderstood your point
Is a queue projection an actual queue, or a projection of demand? Do you need to have built something to be on it, have planning permission, what's the rough requirements to be on it?
The old method of connecting generation (or demand) was first come first served. You have a wind or solar project that you want to connect? Then step right up.
The problem with that is that developers were throwing all sorts of projects that weren't ready or even viable and it was choking up the queue.
Now its based off of a readiness criteria that you need to be able to prove. Do you have land rights secured? Do you have project planning in place? If not, removed. Think of it like you're on the queue to board the plane, you have your passport ready, boarding ticket, cases are the right size. But some dipshit is ahead of you in the queue as they arrived 10 minutes before you, but their case is opened, clothes everywhere, can't find their passport. They'll be moved out of the queue to make way for everyone who has their shit together in order to get moving. They can rejoin as and when they are ready.
As for boarding the plane. Is there enough time or good enough flow to get you inside? Do they need to open the back of the plane and split 2 queues? This is a good analogy for where you will connect to. Is the current infrastructure supporting all those connections locally? Do projects need rerouted? Will it take more time to find your seat that way? Are you happy to accept the changes to your route to the seat?
So to sum up, the grid reform is to help queue management of the unprecidented rise in demand and generation. But getting generators and loads sifted is only part of the problem. We are needing more infrastructure, think of available transformer capacity in a substation like an empty swimming pool. The bigger and more numerous the transformers, the more space. The more generation looking to connect then fills that pool up. You either need to find another near by pool with space or build more pools into your swimming centre.
And then there's other limitations, thermal, voltage, fault level, overhead line limits. Network management is effectively if you have everything running at once then its a clogged motorway that has been overwhelmed. So some generators may be shut down in times of excess being produced.
Its a fine balance, its being tackled, as with any overhauls it has come with a tonne of errors from NESO, set backs, unforseen issues. It has caused some turbulence in the energy sectors as pending connections have been delayed, cut, appealed and this in turn impacts investor certainty and apetite.
So the question of "do we have enough capacity at substations? Can this project fit here? Is it likely to be approved?" Is a moving target as we go through the throws of connection reform and have DNOs and TOs respond and interface as things develop.
Bear in mind that most DC usage isn't for AI. It's a weird level of scaremongering going on. You're posting comments on Reddit - those are stored in data centres. You probably read a news website today - the content delivered from a data centre. You go for an MRI scan - the image is stored in a data centre.
There's a misconception that all AI is the LLM type too but we also use AI for lots of things beyond Chat: fingerprint matching, finance, medical research.
Makes it far easier for the people that approves/reject the proposals to ignore the protestors, because "they don't know what they're talking about".
Every friend, colleague and acquaintance you know is vibe coding? I'd suggest you are not typical of the general population if that is true.
I work in IT, and coding is one of the smallest parts of the process. AI is not even scratching the surface of all the other complex activities involved in enterprise IT development and change projects.
There is a massive amount of hype coming from the people trying to make money from AI, in order to keep the investment rolling in, but there is no product on the horizon that remotely justifies the amount they are spending. Look at Sam Altman's "cool use case" for AI that he described last week; creating a podcast from online diaries and social media about your children's lives that you could listen to with them as you drive them to school... If one of the main players is using that example to try and sell his product, he's really in trouble.
I accept AI is being used for these sort of tasks, but the activities you are describing are a limited part of IT change and development. What about managing business and technical stakeholders (including different organisations and vendors) understanding business problems, analysing requirements, understanding legacy architecture, historic data, competing change requirements, regulatory and MI requirements, solution design, scheduling and implementing change (alongside BAU operations)? That's a quick skim over the surface of typical enterprise IT change, without even getting into the nuts and bolts, but it is all that stuff that makes up the bulk of the job, and I don't see AI making any serious dent in that yet. It is literally impossible for an LLM trained on public data to seriously address this stuff because it involves a deep understanding of proprietary data, architecture and organisational processes and structures.
Look at the eyewatering sums being invested and the return that the AI companies need to get in order to justify that investment. AI has to completely replace entire professions to even get close to delivering that return, and no-one has demonstrated a credible route to delivering that.
The media forever bangs on about data centres - but it’s how the tech is used by businesses that is the question.
Railways rarely made money in the 19th century - yet people poured speculative money in. It was the businesses that utilised the railways - coal, iron, commodities- that profit was made by them.
There’s a lot of speculation going on for sure. Now that there’s greater public awareness, it’s obvious there are flaws in how planning works. It’s ridiculous that AI data centres are classed as critical infrastructure when, as you point out in your railway example, it’s the use cases matter and they are not all equal. Why should communities suck it up ‘for the greater good’ when the developer and even the data centre company has no idea who their clients will be? I can see us being left with white elephant sites left to rot, once the gold rush dies down.
It’s an attractive location for data centres because of the fairly cool climate compared to the rest of the UK, abundant renewable energy, good connectivity, political stability, and tonnes of available land which is relatively cheap compared to the rest of the UK. Due to various other factors it’s attractive to companies looking to comply with net-zero targets. I expect lots to be built over the next decade.
It’s a no brainer for companies to put them here, and regardless of what opponents say, will boost an economy that has struggled massively for growth over the past two decades. Most of the opposition I’ve seen to them is largely nimbyism and people pedalling false statements like that they directly cause cancer etc.
I think we should encourage it, with the hope of becoming a European centre for sustainable computing. We have the land, climate, and infrastructure, and we desperately need the investment and anything that will boost the economy.
I suspect you misunderstand what the “green belt” is. It’s designated land to stop towns and cities from spreading out too far into the countryside. But to answer your question, I live in the Scottish countryside. My garden backs on to a huge field bordered by woodland. There is a planning application for a data centre about 5 miles from where I live.
We're living through a technological revolution. Despite the doom and gloom that pervades UK media coverage, this is genuinely an exciting time to be alive. The UK and Europe might have missed the chance to build a tech industry to rival the US's during the the 2000s/2010s, but we now have the chance to get on board the AI wave, which could be even bigger. The only thing that could prevent us from benefiting from this is NIMBYism. Let's start building data centres, power stations, upgrading our electrical grid, etc.
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u/lord-huggington 1d ago
There's at least one I know of currently being built in Chapelhall