From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
h/t Doug Brodie
Scottish greens getting apoplexy!
From The Herald:
Data centres planned for Scotland would require a “mindblowing” amount of energy that would be sufficient to power several trips in the famous time-travelling DeLorean from the Back To The Future films, campaigners have calculated.
In the hit movies, Doc Brown’s fictional time-travelling car required 1.21 gigawatts (GW) of energy to take Marty McFly, played by actor Michael J Fox, back to 1985 – with this more than the 1.19GW of power produced by the Torness nuclear power station in East Lothian.
Kat Jones, director of the countryside charity Action to Protect Rural Scotland (APRS), criticised the “ridiculous” amount energy needed by the “hyperscale” data centres.
APRS has calculated that data centres in the planning system and going though pre-application processes could require between 4.7 and 5.5 GW of power.
Full story here.
Below is the APRS Press Release:
Today APRS and ERCS wrote to the Planning Minister Ivan McKee to express concern about the energy demands of data centres coming through Scotland’s planning system. They called for a pause on all planning applications until a more strategic approach can be made and strict environmental standards are defined for data centres. The full press release is below.
For release 12:01am Thursday 18th December 2025
An environmental charity has revealed that the energy demand from data centres currently in the Scottish planning system is between 4450 MW and 4950 MW, which is larger than the winter peak electricity demand for the whole of Scotland [1]. Information collected by Action to Protect Rural Scotland (APRS) from the planning portals of Scotland’s local authorities found 17 hyperscale data centers at various stages of the planning process [2] and many others at earlier stages. None have yet received a decision on whether or not they have planning permission.
This rush of applications is related to the exponential growth of AI and the processing power that it demands. UK Government and Scottish Government estimates give a figure of 10-30 MW for 2024 data centre capacity in Scotland. [5] Three quarters of the data centre electricity demand comes from planning applications from just one company.
Today, in a letter to the Scottish Government environmental charities Action to Protect Rural Scotland (APRS) and the Environmental Rights Centre for Scotland (ERCS) call for an urgent response to the threat these data centres pose to Scotland’s energy security, energy prices and climate targets.
APRS and ERCS are calling on the Scottish Government to pause all applications to give time to examine the implications for Scotland’s energy grid, energy prices and net zero targets, as well as other impacts on the environment and on local communities.
APRS Director, Kat Jones, told the Herald:
“It’s hard to imagine another area of life where boasting about how much energy something uses would be a selling point.
“You don’t see washing machines, houses and TVs sold on the basis of how much energy they use – rather the reverse. Society has been trying to be as efficient on energy as possible to deal with the existential threat of climate breakdown, after all.”
I do find it extraordinary that an organisation set up to protect the Scottish countryside should prioritise Net Zero over the industrialisation of the Highlands by wind farms and pylons!
Kat Jones, of course, is welcome to give up computers and all the other trappings of modern life. But I suspect that she won’t.
And if these data centres are not built in Scotland, they will simply be built somewhere else.
There is a simple solution to all this. Build two or three clean burning, environmentally friendly CCGT plants.
As with Ireland, this is all a reminder that wind and solar power cannot run a modern economy.
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The thought of peasant scum having nice things fills the Green Blob with dread.
Loons.. They plaster their whole gorgeous countryside with wind turbines..
… then complain about a small building for a data centre.
There is something VERY WRONG in their heads.
The choice is, as the article states: to be in the modern world or not. Cheap and abundant energy is essential for prosperity and modern civilization.
According to the club of rome ” the consumption of energy must be scaled back “(Beyond the Limits/ to growth)
– “if change is delayed until 2015, total collapse is inevitable”
And the club of rome was so Italian that all the leading figures of the World3 limits to growth -model
(Meadows,Mesarovic,Forrester)were from the MiT.
10 years on, no signs of collapse
“The choice is, as the article states: to be in the modern world or not”
Well, the men do wear dresses there.
So, the same folks pushing the Retardables scam are suddenly now concerned about the grid?
Ba-hahahahahahaha!
It’s ridiculous to think of investing in Scotland, period.
Not if government allows private sector industry to build a few modern HELE Coal fired
stations to provide substantial baseload power on the southern coalfields. They would need
backup with gas plants fueled from regenerated North Sea fields, and possibly small
nuclear plants where convenient.
However, this will require a total backdown on Net Zero schemes, regulations and Climate legislation. If you desire economic growth and more prosperity, these changes will have to be made soon!
“1.21 gigawatts (GW) of energy ” rolls eyes, not a good start.
According to Doc Brown, his time-travelling DeLorean used 1.21 jigawatts. 🤣 Not sure what that converts to outside of Hollywood or APRS.
Evidently Scottish climate-kooks feel that the country hasn’t had enough to celebrate since the victory over the English in the Battle of Bannockburn 1n 1314. So they think that rejecting AI would be next best. Realistic Scots, i.e., the majority, are fully aware that the alternate energies proposed by the climate alarmists are not only inadequate for heat and light but also more expensive than fossil fuels and will do next to nothing to save the environment.
I can’t blame them – net zero malarkey aside, when they say;
That means, Bill Go Up. And that’s not going to go down well with any Scot.
It is true that wind, solar and storage can’t support the proposed AI centers but more importantly wind, solar and storage can’t support Scotland even without AI centers. Wake up wind and solar don’t work, net zero is a farce and unachievable. Support the AI centers but only if they help finance new clean fossil fuel and nuclear power generators. The public has first dibs on the power so I suggest AI build plenty.
There are no clean fossil fuels
Wind and solar work
Protracted high pressure and at night, then they don’t.
The question is not whether they work, in the sense of generate electricity when there is wind and sun, obviously they do. The question is what they produce. The usual tactic of the wind and solar lobby is to pretend that they produce dispatchable power. This is not done by explicitly making the claim, but its done by using such parameters as the number of homes a given wind or solar installation or set of them will power.
In fact of course a wind and solar powered grid, if that is all you have, will not power any number of homes or businesses because intermittency. The extreme example is the regular winter and summer calms in the UK which reduce wind generation to a few percent of faceplate for days on end. And the winter short days and low sun which reduce solar to close to nothing in the winter months.
But this is not the greatest problem, that is continual year round intermittency, as exhibited here:
http://www.gridwatch.co.uk/wind
There is no solution at the moment to intermittency, nor is there one on the horizon. Until there is, until wind and solar can be made to produce dispatchable year round 24 x 7 electricity, they are useless.
This is why Nick Stokes, the local advocate for the renewable lobby, basically abandoned the usual inflated claims and has tried to justify wind and solar on the grounds not that they are lowering emissions or replacing conventional, but on the grounds that they deliver fuel savings which financially justify adding them to a conventional grid. Its the ‘free fuel’ argument.
But he has never produced any numbers, or referred to any peer reviewed studies, which show that is true. And the argument, when examined, rests on accounting illiteracty and a failure to apply standard cost and investment analysis tools to wind and solar..
Yes, they produce energy which invariably has negative market value due to being available at the wrong time.
No fuel is entirely impact-free across its full lifecycle.
Reliability Rankings (by Capacity Factor)
Nuclear Energy: ~92–93%
Nuclear plants run almost continuously for 18–24 months before refuelling, making them the most reliable baseload source.
Natural Gas: ~56–60%
Highly reliable due to flexible generation and mature infrastructure, though subject to fuel supply and maintenance cycles.
Coal: ~40–42%
Reliable for baseload but less flexible than gas; downtime for maintenance and fuel handling reduces its factor.
Hydroelectric: ~41–42%
Seasonal water availability limits reliability despite being dispatchable when reservoirs are full.
Wind: ~35%
Intermittent and location-dependent.
Solar: ~24–25%
Highly variable; depends on sunlight.
Clearly, wind and solar are unreliable.
So, why aren’t you calling for more nuclear? Is your far left wing bias showing?
Wind and Solar work occasionally … fixed it for you
You are clear evidence that some people have never been outdoors.
“Wind and solar work” only for renewables investors, Not the general public, who are screwed over by higher prices, intermittent power, loss of industrial jobs and environmental destruction of world class scenery. Wake up and smell the `sh.t’ you are extolling.
The rejection of the plans for hyperscale datacenters has next to nothing to do with the ecoloons. Their demands on the water and electricity supply of a given region raise rates and lower availability for everyone. No one wants them. In fact, there is not enough power generation to support many of them, even if they could break ground this very day.
Gov. Ron DeSantis, not a known ecoloon exactly, is ready to sign legislation in his state which protects citizens from increased electricity and water rates, and lowered availability, as a result of datacenters. He points out that once they are built they only employ a dozen or so people, and those would likely be H1-B hires anyway.
The burden to a grid which was built for domestic use and for manufacturing is not justified. Not only that, but the monopolies this serves (although they may just lose their shirts instead) is contrary to our laws and to our way of life.
Pretty much what I came here to say. Sure, a lot of the data center opponents are opposed for odd reasons. But there are probably good reasons to oppose these things as well. We are being buried in AI hype. But if you read the financial pages, you’ll see growing skepticism that AI mongers can possibly generate sufficient revenue to pay off their enormous loans. It’s not that AI is unmitigated crap. In the very long run it likely isn’t. It’s that AI data centers come with few long term jobs, a lot of unpleasant side effects, and quite possibly a lot of financial disappointment for those who embrace them. Moreover, most economic benefit from AI will very likely be in places far from the actual data centers.
Where’s the upside for the locals?
The plan was to bring energy and gas prices down and opening our mining industries. And this would result in bringing manufacturing back to the states, where it all started in the first place!
Instead of TTP and TTiP Gangsta trade blocks, we were going to make bilateral trade deals. That is one of the main reasons we need to make individual trade deals, and this would never happen in a million years without an incentive like reciprocal trade deals (read: tariffs).
So our sons and daughters were going to start manufacturing incandescent light bulbs, jewelry and fashion, and devices, for starters. It was all going to plan!
But no. Tech bros move in on 45-47, he thinks he’s adding “trillions to our economy, and the ENTIRE plan is wrecked, rooned, doa!
If Trump’s plan for bringing industry back to America does in fact succeed, those re-shored industries will need a lot of energy to support them.
It remains my opinion that investors in AI data centers intend to lock up new-build energy resources with the aim of selling access to those resources when the AI bubble eventually bursts and electrical energy becomes a more valuable commodity than AI data services.
And that writer of the article is guilty by omission. Putting ‘eco loons’ in there to ‘stop progress’ is a flawed framing.
I am usually irritated when those who support just about everything without a context write one sided articles to paint a binary and simplistic picture , ironically often by the same people who would object to these types of articles from the other side, as is the case here.
I call it the binary blindness. Support the team, look away from anomalies.
I predicted in 2017 that artificial intelligence would be the big replacement for the fake climate crisis, though I thought the focus would be on the impact of AI on society rather than AI energy use.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/01/21/the-next-eco-scare-story/
Is this just a miss type, or don’t the authors understand the difference between energy and power: …time-travelling car required 1.21 gigawatts (GW) of energy… …more than the 1.19GW of power…
Yep, GW is a multiple unit of power, not energy. Energy would be GWh.
Hold the AI as the climate changers need 1 megawatt flash chargers to save the planet-
400 km in 5 minutes: BYD’s flash charging EV technology explained
ROFL a 1 Megawatt charger yeah I can see them being rolled out everywhere 🙂
I looked up the rollout for Australia
https://zecar.com/reviews/byd-to-launch-1mw-hyper-fast-chargers-in-australia-by-2026
>>> with a target of 25 locations by the end of 2026 <<<
They obviously aren’t planning on having many cars and want to bet they are all in inner city greenie suburbs in Sydney and Melbourne 🙂
This is the ultimate in superficial sales advertising gimiks in a long while.
Let them waste their money.. Just don’t give them any taxpayer assistance.
I would never drive an EV. I know too much about electro chemical cells.
There is no way I would ever get close to a 1 megawatt flash charger.
I know too much about electricity and safety and…. and…. and….