Scotland has made Environmental Impact Assessments mandatory for new data centres exceeding 50MW, tightening planning rules despite the country’s ambitions to attract major investment in AI infrastructure.

The move goes considerably further than rules introduced last month, which require planning authorities to notify Scottish Ministers within seven days when new applications for data centres exceeding 50MW are validated. 

That earlier change increased Government oversight of Scotland’s large data centre pipeline without automatically requiring an EIA, but now data centre developers will actually face a new hurdle for the first time. 

The Scottish Government said the new EIA direction reflects an evolving evidence base around the environmental effects of data centres, including their energy and water requirements. It also directly appeases critics of recent data centre developments that were previously told they didn’t require an EIA during the planning process. 

Hannah Mary Goodlad, Scotland’s Public Finance Minister noted, “Ensuring that an Environmental Impact Assessment is always part of the application process will create a level playing field for developers and will ensure potentially significant environmental effects are considered from the outset.”

MSPs back calls to withhold hyperscale decisions

The change coincided with a Scottish Parliament debate on a Greens proposal for a moratorium on planning applications for new hyperscale data centres until a national strategy and updated planning guidance were produced.

While the SNP recently backed calls for a temporary moratorium, the Greens’ proposal fell short of a majority. Instead, MSPs first approved a Scottish Government amendment replacing the moratorium proposal, before backing a Labour amendment which said no planning or consenting decisions on hyperscale applications should be made until national guidance has been completed.

The Labour amendment passed by 94 votes to 26, before the final amended motion was approved by 80 votes to 26, with 15 abstentions.

The final motion also calls for a definition of what constitutes a hyperscale data centre, robust environmental standards, greater clarity over community and social impacts and consideration of community benefit schemes.

That might feel like a huge blow to data centre developers in the region – after all, the Scottish Parliament has in effect backed a temporary pause in planning decisions until the national guidance is completed. In reality, however, Scottish Parliament resolutions don’t actually have a binding legal effect. Instead, the motion represents Parliament’s political position rather than a change to planning law. 

For now then, nothing much has changed – apart from the requirement for planning applications to include an EIA. Even if it did have a binding legal effect, it likely wouldn’t have lasted long – as the Scottish Government has committed to producing national planning and spatial guidance by the end of the year. 

Which projects are likely to face the biggest tests under the new rules? 

The tougher regime comes as several large Scottish data centre proposals move through the planning system.

One of the clearest tests will be DataVita’s proposed DV4 facility at Chapelhall in North Lanarkshire, part of Scotland’s first AI Growth Zone.

DataVita submitted its planning permission in principle application earlier this month, with around £849.6 million of construction investment proposed. It’s planning to build a data centre of approximately 100-124MW, comfortably above the new threshold, but when it submitted its application, North Lanarkshire Council had already considered whether DV4 required an EIA – which it said it didn’t. That makes the project an immediate test of the new national direction. 

DataVita tried to shore up its political capital before Wednesday’s vote, publishing open letters inviting Scottish Greens co-leader Ross Greer and Action to Protect Rural Scotland Director Dr Kat Jones to visit its Chapelhall campus and discuss its plans.

Danny Quinn, Managing Director of DataVita, noted, “We need to move beyond a debate in which one side has to be entirely right and the other entirely wrong.”

The company has argued that data centres differ substantially in their design and resource requirements and that those differences should form part of the debate over their environmental impact.

Scotland increases scrutiny of large data centres

The mandatory EIA requirement is the latest in a series of interventions by the Scottish Government as the country’s data centre pipeline grows.

Alongside introducing the 50MW notification regime in August, Ministers recalled the appeal over the rejected Redheughs Avenue data centre in Edinburgh for ministerial determination and ordered EIAs for proposed developments in Edinburgh and Fife.

The latest direction moves that scrutiny beyond selected projects by establishing a common environmental assessment requirement for new data centres above 50MW where the relevant Schedule 2 categories apply.

That leaves Scotland trying to balance two objectives: attracting data centre and AI infrastructure investment while imposing tighter environmental scrutiny on its largest developments.

The next significant step will be the national planning and spatial guidance now being developed by the Scottish Government. Until that arrives, developers have a much clearer EIA requirement, but continued uncertainty over when some of Scotland’s largest proposed projects will receive a planning decision.