Why Hundreds of People Marched in Scotland to Say 'Stop Building Data Centres'
Hundreds of protesters gathered at the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh on 3 September 2026, demanding a full freeze on the construction of new data centres across Scotland. The protest, organised by the campaign group Global Justice Now, ran from 11:30am to 1:00pm at the parliament building (known as Holyrood) and drew community campaigners from across the country (The Guardian).
A data centre is a large building filled with powerful computers that store and process information. They are essential for things like artificial intelligence (AI), cloud storage, and the apps and websites people use every day. But they use enormous amounts of electricity and water, generate heat, and can overwhelm the quiet rural areas where they are often built.
The protest was about a building boom of at least 20 proposed data centre projects across Scotland, with more rumoured. Some are planned for countryside sites near small villages; others would sit right next to care homes and residential housing. The biggest concern is a planned development in Auchtertool, Fife, which would be the second largest data centre in the world. Another major flashpoint is a proposed £2bn facility in the Lammermuir Hills in the Scottish Borders, planned about a mile from a village of roughly a hundred people. Kathleen White, a local campaigner against the Lammermuir project, has become one of the more visible voices of community opposition (The Guardian).
The campaign is led by Kat Jones, 52, director of the group Action to Protect Rural Scotland. Her coalition wants more than just a pause. They are asking the Scottish government to study the environmental impact of the data centres and to write clear rules defining what counts as a "green" data centre. Without those definitions, campaigners argue, the term risks becoming meaningless as more projects are proposed (The Guardian).
There has been some political movement, though it is limited. On 1 September 2026, Scotland's First Minister John Swinney announced a "strategic approach" to data centres as part of his government's annual policy plan. He set expectations around environmental sustainability, resource use, and community benefit. But he did not agree to a moratorium (a formal, temporary ban). That partial step follows months of signals from the Scottish government. A Guardian report on 7 July 2026 said the government was considering a sweeping moratorium on new data centre construction, which would have challenged the UK's national AI strategy directly. By 25 August, The Guardian reported that the government was "inching towards a moratorium" amid concerns over the Auchtertool project and other large developments (The Guardian, 25 August; The Guardian, 7 July).
The UK government's role adds another layer. Westminster has designated five "AI growth zones" across the UK — areas singled out for concentrated investment in AI infrastructure. One of them will be in Lanarkshire, a rural area outside Glasgow. That decision places the UK's national AI plans directly into Scottish communities, creating tension between the UK government's economic strategy and Scotland's own planning controls. Campaign groups have united around the moratorium demand ahead of the Holyrood protest (Protect the Wild; The Guardian).
The shift from July's talk of a moratorium to September's softer "strategic approach" is worth noting. Swinney's language sets expectations on sustainability and community benefit without actually stopping development, which reads as an attempt to acknowledge protesters' concerns without scaring off the investors that the UK's AI growth zones are meant to attract. The question now is whether a "strategic approach" will satisfy the demand for clear "green" data centre rules, or whether it simply lets applications keep moving while the analysis campaigners want is still being written.
Protesters carried "stop the data centres" placards and banners at Holyrood, a sign that community frustration has grown well beyond filing planning objections and into visible public action. With at least 20 projects in the pipeline and the Auchtertool mega-facility looming as a test case, the gap between Swinney's strategic approach and the full freeze protesters want is the space where the next phase of this fight will play out.
