The International Energy Agency has recently estimated that global data centre energy consumption would double by 2030. The key question remains: what kind of energy will power this? With its abundant energy resources, Scotland has been discussed as a potential hub for so-called green data centres powered by renewables. Yet important challenges remain, including ensuring that communities benefit and that the regulatory environment doesn’t disincentivise investment. Below is a report on the University of Edinburgh’s event, Building a Sustainable Tomorrow: The Role of Energy and Data Infrastructure. At the event, Edinburgh experts and stakeholders from the Scottish government and the private sector discussed how Scotland should approach the deployment of data centres and their integration into the energy system.
Data Centres and Sustainability
The past decades have seen global demand for computing rise significantly, driven by waves of digital transformation: first through the growth of the internet, then the emergence of cloud computing and hyperscale data centres, and most recently the AI revolution. Data centres range in scale from small local servers to vast hyperscale facilities; they underpin essential services, high-performance computing, streaming, data storage and the computing requirements of AI.
Historically, advances in server and cooling efficiency helped keep the sector’s total energy consumption relatively stable, even as capacity rose. However, rapidly growing demand, particularly from AI, is likely to outstrip the gains made from efficiency measures. It is therefore essential that the development of AI and its associated data infrastructure is grounded in the fundamentals of energy systems, rather than treated as detached from the physical resources on which it depends.
From a UK perspective, the question is no longer whether data centres will play an important role in the economy and across society, but how much capacity is required, where it should be located, and how this demand can be aligned with an increasingly renewables-based grid. With hundreds of data centres across the UK and a trend towards fewer, larger sites, often run by hyperscale providers, this is both a national and local planning challenge.
The risks and benefits of developing a data centre cluster must be carefully assessed at both a system and a local level. Data centres, if strategically located and efficiently integrated into electricity and heating systems, offer potential to support a renewables-driven grid and economic development. But if poorly sited, or if the scale of clustering outstrips available infrastructure and resources, data centres can intensify local grid constraints while also creating environmental pressures and social tensions.
A Cross-Sector Dialogue
On 21 May 2026, stakeholders from policy, industry, academia, and the wider community gathered at the Edinburgh Futures Institute to explore the prospect of Scotland emerging as an investment location for green data centres.
The Industry Day was supported through the College of Science and Engineering’s Industry Engagement funding and developed through collaboration across the Schools of Engineering, GeoSciences and Mathematics, EPCC, and the Bayes Centre, with support from Edinburgh Innovations and the Edinburgh Earth Initiative.
Participants spanned the energy sector, data centre operators, public agencies, universities and community representatives. The event was designed to foster dialogue around the twin challenges and opportunities facing the sector: supporting the UK’s ambitions for data-driven economic growth, particularly in AI, while advancing towards net zero.
Through a series of industry and policy perspectives, lightning talks on current research, in-depth roundtable discussions, and an expert panel, the event brought together a wide range of expertise and perspectives.
The agenda covered a number of strategic themes: from the future of energy markets, to technical, economic and policy issues around data centres themselves, the potential for waste heat recovery, social acceptance, and the kinds of innovation needed to enable sustainability in this fast-evolving sector.
Opening contributions from government and industry helped frame the discussion. Catherine Williams, Deputy Director in the Department for Onshore Electricity at the Scottish Government, highlighted the importance of energy storage and flexibility in managing Scotland’s renewable generation, providing important context for discussion of how new data centre loads might be integrated into the energy system. David Wildash, Chief Strategy Officer at Apatura, emphasised that secure grid connection, power costs and access to renewable energy are central to data centre location decisions. David Pearson, Group Sustainable Development Director at Star Refrigeration, focused on the potential to recover and reuse data centre waste heat through heat networks.
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University of Edinburgh Expertise The event featured nine presentations by leading Edinburgh researchers.
Together, these contributions demonstrated that green data centres are not simply a computing challenge, but a whole-system challenge spanning electricity networks, heat, cooling, forecasting, storage, AI efficiency and local infrastructure. |
Scotland as a Location for Green Data Centre Investment
A key question explored in the workshop was whether Scotland could develop as a location for green data centre investment. While it is far less developed than established data centre clusters such as London, Amsterdam, or Dublin, Scotland has some potential structural advantages which could make it a leader in green data centre development:
- Abundant renewable resources: The country’s wind and hydropower, combined with a cool climate, provide a starting point for low-carbon operations. The potential to integrate battery energy storage, and to exploit curtailed wind alongside waste heat in district heating, could support this.
- Innovation ecosystem: Scotland’s universities, skilled talent base, and commitment to the green transition create opportunities to link data centre investment with skills pipelines, cutting-edge research, and positive spillovers across emerging sectors such as data science, advanced manufacturing, AI and clean energy.
- Sector trends: Some AI workloads are less sensitive to physical proximity to traditional clusters, allowing for the build-out of data centres closer to renewable energy sources.
However, several challenges were identified:
- Governance and regulatory fragmentation: Overlapping responsibilities between UK and Scottish authorities could slow down development, leading to investors choosing competing green locations such as Scandinavia.
- Infrastructure: There are long grid connection queues in Scotland and the rest of Britain, and a lack of integrated heat networks.
- Local value and trust: There is growing scepticism about community benefit, which could compromise the social licence for developers.
Key Themes from the Workshop
The Complexity of Data Centre Location
Location decisions are multi-faceted, involving proximity to demand centres, existing clusters, access to electricity and water resources, and planning frameworks. With sector expansion and growing geographic diversification of data centres, Scotland may be well positioned. However, differences between types of data centre (hyperscale, edge, AI, colocation) mean there can be no one-size-fits-all approach to what a ‘good’ location is.
Grid Capacity and System Planning
Grid capacity is a scarce and slow-moving public resource. The concentration of data centres in grid-constrained clusters (e.g., London, Dublin) has become a bottleneck. In the Irish case, this has resulted in restrictions on new builds and stricter regulation. As AI-driven economic growth is sought, the UK is seeking to shift to more geographically diversified data centre/AI clusters. Scotland offers strategic advantages, but faces its own challenges in securing grid connections and making the most of local flexibility. Optimising siting strategies, links to district heating, and clear prioritisation in the grid connections queue are emerging as key policy levers.
Heat as a Resource
Almost all electricity consumed by data centres is ultimately transformed into heat, creating an opportunity for recovery and reuse. While technologies exist to harvest and reuse this heat in district heating or industrial processes, obstacles identified were viable business models, infrastructure costs and coordination challenges. Scottish examples such as the Queens Quay Heat Network in Clydebank and the Shawfair heat network show that large-scale heat networks are already feasible, but connecting data centres to such systems will require the right local heat demand, commercial arrangements and long-term coordination. Heat is expensive to move compared to data or power, so only certain sites or site types will be suitable. There is a need to assess the real appetite of both data centre investors and potential heat users, and to ensure that heat reuse is not just technically possible, but also economically and socially viable.
Community Value and Social Licence
Community acceptance emerged as a key issue. While there are misconceptions on key topics, there are real concerns about the environmental and local impacts of new data centre investments. Social licence depends on transparent, proactive engagement which integrates community perspectives into project siting and design. Frameworks are needed to quantify, monitor, and fairly distribute these benefits, as well as to counter misinformation and build legitimacy.
Innovation for More Efficient Data Centres
There is an emerging innovation ecosystem around green data centres, already leading to advances in energy and water efficiency. This includes cutting-edge cooling technologies, experiments in grid interactive data centres and edge computing. Beyond incremental improvements, significant potential exists for breakthrough gains, such as innovations in chip design and more efficient AI models.
The Economic Case
At a macroeconomic level, AI, as a general-purpose technology, has the potential to underpin productivity growth. At the local level, however, data centres do not typically lead to significant direct employment. Their benefits may emerge through positive spillovers into other sectors, including the growth of data-intensive firms, or through co-location with industrial users who can utilise waste heat. For Scotland, the challenge is to embed data centre developments into a broader strategy for economic growth, particularly in developing its data-intensive services economy and the growing renewables sector.
Conclusions and Next Steps
What emerged clearly from the industry day is both the potential and complexity of establishing Scotland as an investment location for green data centres. Key conclusions include:
- The meaning of “green” in this context must be evidence-based and avoid greenwashing.
- Large data centre developments that place demands on local infrastructure, resources or communities must demonstrate clear local value, alongside contributing to national economic development.
- Regulation must be flexible and responsive; static definitions of a ‘green data centre’ may be insufficient to regulate a very dynamic and fast-changing sector.
- Continued, structured cross-sector dialogue will be vital to develop the underpinning evidence base, advance innovation, and ensure new developments are environmentally sustainable and socially legitimate.
At the University of Edinburgh, we are committed to sustaining and advancing this cross-sector dialogue.
If you are interested in learning more or getting involved, please contact Andrew.Aveyard@ei.ed.ac.uk
Authors:
Ronan Bolton. Professor of Sustainable Energy. Earth Champion for Clean Energy Systems. University of Edinburgh
Jan Zizka. School of Social and Political Science. University of Edinburgh
The article was first published on Edinburgh’s Electricity Markets Research Hub website.
