Meeting of the Parliament 24 June 2026 [Draft]
As Julie MacDougall said, the AI growth zone is a UK Government initiative, and that initiative has resulted in speculation in the areas that were designated as growth zones, as in Lanarkshire. Our stance on the growth zone initiative is that, obviously, we recognise that, where a data centre development is proposed, it must have strict environmental impact assessments associated with it, and we must have an idea of the number of data centres that are likely to go through planning. We also need to ensure that our regulations are fit for purpose.
There are opportunities that arise if data centres are sited in the right locations, and I have mentioned a few of those opportunities. We have an enormous amount of constrained renewable electricity that cannot make its way into the grid and which is being wasted—indeed, constraint payments are given to the generators. Data centres can provide an outlet to use that renewable electricity, but they cannot come at the expense of other environmental concerns.