Scotland Requires Environmental Reviews for Data Centres Over 50MW
Scotland will require new data centres above 50MW to submit an environmental impact assessment before they can proceed.
The Scottish government announced the requirement on 16 September 2026. The Guardian The threshold is 50MW of power capacity. Projects above that level must complete an assessment under the planning system. An environmental impact assessment is a formal study of effects on land, water, energy use and local communities. The announcement was published as "Direction for new data centres" covering Environmental Impact Assessments for new data centres exceeding 50 megawatts capacity. Scottish Government
The September direction followed an earlier intervention in August. The Scottish Government published a news announcement titled "Data centre planning direction" covering data centre developments exceeding 50 Megawatts power capacity on 17 August 2026. It also published an August 2026 document titled "Planning - Notification Direction Letter - Data Centres - August 2026" referencing the Town and Country Planning (Environmental Impact Assessment) (Scotland) Regulations 2017 and a 50MW capacity threshold. The government changed datacentre rules ahead of a Holyrood vote on a moratorium on new hyperscale datacentres. A moratorium is a temporary pause, and hyperscale means very large facilities often built for cloud computing and AI. No halt was agreed.
The vote was brought by the Scottish Greens. The party said on 13 September 2026 it would use an opposition debate on Wednesday, 16 September 2026 to seek a parliamentary vote on a data centre moratorium. Its Holyrood motion calls for a moratorium on new datacentre projects until a national strategy and updated planning guidance addressing cumulative impacts on energy demand and the environment are produced. Cumulative impacts means the combined strain from many projects, not just one. Scottish Parliament motion S7M-01177, titled "Hyperscale Data Centres" and dated 16 September 2026, proposes that the Scottish Parliament agrees to a moratorium on planning applications for new hyperscale data centres. A separate Scottish Parliament petition, PE2233, calls for a moratorium on planning applications for all hyperscale data centres until their environmental impacts have been fully assessed. That petition was published on 29 July 2026. Stop Climate Chaos Scotland had proposed in August that the Scottish Government immediately require all data centre plans of 50MW and above to complete a full Environmental Impact Assessment at the pre-planning stage.
More than 20 large datacentres have been proposed in Scotland. A proposed scheme in Auchtertool, Fife, has been billed as the second-largest in the world. Public Finance Minister Hannah Mary Goodlad is the minister identified with the government's position, while Kat Jones is the director of the NGO Action to Protect Rural Scotland. Torness nuclear power station is due to close in 2030. AI leaders were scheduled to gather at Dumfries House, Ayrshire, on the Thursday after 16 September 2026 for a summit with King Charles on the future of technology.
The broader context here is control of cumulative load rather than any single application. A 50MW threshold captures hyperscale proposals while leaving smaller edge and enterprise facilities under existing screening. Practitioners will watch three points. First, whether assessments are required at pre-planning stage and how notification directions interact with local authority screening opinions under the 2017 Regulations. Second, whether Holyrood demands a national strategy with explicit treatment of cumulative energy demand, grid connection queuing and water use. Third, how the consenting pipeline responds if more than 20 proposals advance in parallel while Torness approaches its 2030 closure date and new generation and transmission remain subject to separate consents.
