A public information meeting is being held on Monday evening to discuss the greenbelt and the proposed data centre at Hermiston.
The details of the meeting are here.
The West Edinburgh Against AI Data Centre appears to be organising and have issued a poster saying “Our Air, Our Water, Our Greenbelt, Our Future.”
The group has also set up a petition at The Scottish Parliament calling for a “moratorium on planning applications for all hyper scale data centres until their environmental impacts have been fully assessed.”
The Scottish Government has only this morning put out a direction from Public Finance Minister, Hannah Mary Goodlad, requiring councils to advise Scottish Minister within seven days of any major new applications to build data centres. This directive will apply to centres in excess of 50 Megawatts power capacity.
Ms Goodlad said: “Data centres is a rapidly emerging sector, and planning has an important role to play in considering applications, harnessing economic opportunities, and finding solutions which align with our climate goals.
“We must balance the economic and employment interests in developing data centres with national energy, climate and community wealth building ambitions, which are vital to our future prosperity, as well as the potential impact on local communities.
“It is essential to secure public benefits from this type of development, and I am clear that voices of communities that will be affected will be central to any considerations on data centres.”
