TL;DR

Actor and campaigner Sam Heughan has come out against the wave of AI data centre applications in Scotland, describing the developments as a short-sighted money grab that puts corporate and landowner returns ahead of long-term effects on countryside, water and local communities. Twenty-four sites are currently proposed, and their combined draw would take Scotland’s peak electricity demand to more than twice its present level.

The energy arithmetic is the part that should interest anyone tracking UK AI infrastructure. Backup generators at most of these sites would run on gas or diesel, and one site alone is forecast to become one of Scotland’s ten largest polluters. Heughan’s argument is that this cannot be squared with a legally binding net zero target for 2045 while the country is also asked to decarbonise home heating and transport.

Siting is the second objection, and it is more concrete than the celebrity framing suggests. At Larbert, outside Falkirk, a scheme that would place a large facility roughly 20 metres from a care home, with housing and a hospital nearby, has drawn hundreds of objections. The environmental impact assessment for that scheme records a major adverse effect on local greenhouse gas emissions and air quality, and the same rating for its effect on the area’s groundwater ecosystem. Nitrogen oxide emissions from generator-equipped sites are a recurring concern across the applications.

Heughan’s connection to the issue is not incidental. Outlander filmed at Hunterston in North Ayrshire — now the site of a proposed 500MW hyperscale facility, and where campaigners held a three-day protest outside the 900-year-old estate during the Clan Hunter annual gathering. He also raised waste heat, given that promised heat pump networks do not yet exist, and constant noise from cooling plant near hospitals, schools and care homes.

Looking Forward

Opposition in Scotland is broadening beyond local objection: the SNP has backed calls for a temporary ban on data centre development, and the Scottish Government has already ruled that an environmental report is required for a proposed Edinburgh site. For developers, the Larbert assessment is the more useful signal — the adverse findings came from the applicant’s own EIA, not from campaigners, which makes them considerably harder to argue away at committee.