Auchtertool

Um, this will allow for the strategic monitoring of the national pipeline of major data center proposals and their implications for communities and wider infrastructure.

The minister has also recalled a planning appeal relating to a proposed green data center in Edinburgh so the decision can be taken by ministers, and directions requiring environmental impact assessments for the proposed data center developments at Wester Hermiston in Edinburgh and at Auchtertool in Fife, um, have been issued by the minister.

In addition to that, the Cabinet will give further consideration to this issue in the course of its program of policy work over the autumn.

And in relation to the questions about the, the definition of green data centers, green data centers, um, must be powered by, from renewable energy c- sources.

The government says it's in favor of so-called green data centers, but the development at Larbert admits, or the developer admits, that their application would have a major adverse impact on the environment and the local community.

Their proposal was for a 300 megawatt data center with 200 diesel generators right beside a care home, some of whose residents are on ventilators.

Hundreds of people from communities across the country, from Larbert to Bishopbriggs, from Auchtertool to the Lammermuirs, are outside Parliament right now demanding a moratorium on these new hyperscale data centers.

That pause should have started in June.

And we're seeing a bit of a similar turn in Scotland.

Scottish MSP David Torrance, who represents the village of Auchtertool in Fife, where a mammoth data center has been proposed, has told The Guardian he's never seen such a high level of local objection to a project before.

The data center proposed there is, in fact, bigger than the village itself, with an area larger than a hundred football pitches.

Protests are also growing in other towns and villages across the country, which have been inundated with data center proposals, partly because of Scotland's abundant supply of water.

So ILI Group are the developers behind three planned AI data centers in the Central Belt.

So we have Cato in Auchtertool in Fife, Aurelius in Newhouse, North Lanarkshire, and Rufus near Hollowford in East Ayrshire.

So these three data centers are gonna be known as the Stoics and will be among the largest hyperscale data center clusters in the world.

So thank you so much for joining me in the studio today.

Mm-hmm.

And also some kind of wider questions.

And I don't think you'd be surprised that the most questions I got about specific sites were about Auchtertool, um, the one in Fife, which is called Cato.

And we have a question from Liam Robert Stewart, who lives in Auchtertool, and he's basically said that he's concerned there's been zero consideration about kind of local residents' health, um, and you know, the ch- like, how the so- the site has been chosen, and kind of concerns about noise, heat, and air pollution, and how that will kind of affect people and animals.

He was making the case for these things.

And then just a few weeks ago, you might remember, producer Rebecca went up to Auchtertool in Fife, which is a small village with farmland all around it, farmland in which a developer wants to put the second-biggest data center in the world.

Rebecca went to a public meeting to hear the real, genuine fears, concerns, anxieties of the residents there.

And in the same episode, we spoke to an award-winning journalist called Elishadown, who has been doing a lot of work digging into this kind of stuff.

She says she has poked holes in a lot of the plans of these companies and perhaps kind of giving the impression that not is all quite as it seems.

So we wanna get into that again today, and let's go back to Auchtertool, shall we? I've been speaking to a chap called Mark Wilson.

He is the man behind the plans to build that enormous data center right behind a sleepy little village.

[upbeat jingle] Mark Wilson, hello.