Why the most extreme data centre opponents are actually making developers' jobs easier – John McLellan
Constructive criticism can achieve results, but if there’s nothing developers can do to win people round, they might as well not bother trying
When the nice lady who works at our local convenience store asks me what I can do to raise awareness about those terrible data centres, there’s no doubt the issue is cutting through to the public.
And this morning a gaggle of demonstrators will gather outside Floors Castle in the Borders to protest against plans for a hyperscale data centre in the Lammermuir Hills. Maybe more than a gaggle as opposition intensifies across the UK, in the US, Canada and beyond.
Floors is the target today because it’s Roxburghe Estates’ annual Inflatable Insanity family fun day, with obstacle races across courses with giant inflatable barriers in the grounds. Demonstrators hope they too will erect insurmountable barriers to the Southside data centre on rough grazing land owned by Roxburghe Estates, one of 24 such schemes currently set to enter the planning system.
In this baking summer, the temperature has reached boiling point about anything energy related, which puts data centres firmly on the hob, from straightforward nimbyism – accepting the necessity in a tech-driven world, but objecting to the location – to outright rejection of the embodiment of evil, tech-driven capitalism.
‘Howl of discontent’
Harvard professor and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jill Lepore may yet emerge as the high priestess of the data centre backlash, promoting her new book The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State on Radio 4’s Today programme this week, with a dystopian prediction that hyperscale AI centres could drive a future in which jobs have vanished, and everyone lounges listlessly at home on a universal basic income while everything is delivered to our hands by a robot slave.
AI is generating a “howl of discontent” amidst a “sense of powerlessness”, she said, with Silicon Valley millionaires, “the 21st century’s merchant princes”, threatening a world where Western liberal nation states become governed by privately owned machines. Eek! It’s quite the nightmare.
Whether it works out that way is another thing, but latter-day Luddism and the belief that artificial intelligence is by definition bad is taking hold, and positives, like accelerating medical advances and more efficient public and private services, risk being lost as protests mount with every new proposal.
For those who would agree with Prof Lepore, the notion that AI can be stopped ignores the reality that, in authoritarian countries where planning consultation can amount to an immediate notice to quit for the greater good, there will be no such queasiness and rapid advances will be made come what may. The question is by whom and, if the UK doesn’t build its own data capacity, then it will be supplied elsewhere.
SNP seeking to strike a balance
To its credit, the Scottish government has sought to strike a balance, with new regulations requiring ministers to be informed when a data centre application is made and for all projects to undergo a full environmental impact assessment (EIA), the absence of which led to Edinburgh councillors rejecting an application in Edinburgh Park. That application has now been recalled by public finance minister Hannah Mary Goodlad for her to make the final decision.
The cost and complexity of an EIA for these big schemes could help weed out the more speculative bids, and if that doesn’t get them then energy regulator Ofgem’s plan to introduce a refundable, up-front commitment fee of up to £712,500 per megawatt – potentially 7.5 per cent of the total development cost – almost certainly will.
But it’s unlikely to assuage the fears of opponents whose levels of cynicism are hard to counter because until these centres are built, promises for things like job creation, community benefit and environmental impact mitigation are dismissed as exaggerated propaganda at best, and deliberate lies at worst.
Nor is there anything to be done about accusations that it’s “all about money” when it clearly is. These are businesses, not charities, and for the risk involved for the investors the intention is to generate a healthy profit. So what?
Amidst talk of an AI bubble, some companies might go bust, but as others have pointed out, the popping of the Dot Com bubble 25 years ago did not stop the rapid expansion of the internet and the advance of digital technology, or Apple’s game-changing launch of the iPhone in 2007. Companies went bust, but others literally earned a fortune.
Accusations of lies and profiteering
In the interests of full disclosure, I’ve been a media adviser to some data centre applicants and I attended the first public consultation event for the Hunterston proposal by Scottish-based Eneus Energy in West Kilbride village hall on Tuesday, where demonstrators gathered outside with placards and then came in to take the development team to task.
Good-natured though they were, there were still accusations of lies, profiteering and environmental vandalism, with one lady so keen to express her dismay at the pop-up display banners that they swayed back and forth like boxing punchbags.
Such information events are not a means to persuade people to change their minds, but when researched statistics are roundly dismissed as fabrication, persuasion would be pointless anyway. And when a plan next to a decommissioned nuclear power station on land which has been designated for economic development for some years can attract such passionate opposition, then it should be no surprise that applications in rural locations are meeting with stiff resistance.
Not everyone in West Kilbride was opposed to data centres in principle, but for those that were it struck me that if the answer to ”if not here, then where?” is nowhere, it actually makes the developers’ jobs easier because in a zero-sum game there is no need to keep people onside because nothing can be done to win them round. For those who are prepared to engage and criticise constructively, then the outcomes will be better for all.
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