How we should regulate Data Centres

In this week’s In Common article in The National, Craig alerts readers to data centres lobbying the Scottish Government to write their own environmental regulations. He lays out what we should be calling for instead.

There’s an increasingly loud uprising happening in Scotland around AI data centres. Possibly the biggest I’ve seen since the 2016 uproar over shale gas fracking.

Data centre companies are actively lobbying the Scottish Government as we speak and are basically asking for John Swinney to open the gates to them to flood Scotland with as many data centres as he’s willing to make us all swallow. It’s easy to see what the companies get out of it. Scotland has plenty of space, a good amount of water and while electricity prices are high they can often negotiate preferential rates that we could only dream of. What does Scotland get out of it? Higher energy prices, higher demand on increasingly scare water, about three-and-a-half jobs, and the Scottish Government gets to claim that the “inwards investment” line goes up?

Perhaps I can see why Swinney would take that deal.

Most insidiously, the companies appear to be lobbying to write their own environmental laws. Just as with Freeports, their goal will be to effectively deregulate themselves either by getting specific exemptions from regulations or for the Government to allow themselves to internally self-regulate without outside interference (which would amount to the same thing).

“I’m pretty sure that none of the suggestions I’m about to make are in any way objectionable to anyone who doesn’t want to actively harm Scotland’s people or environment.”

We should demand that the Government holds them to the highest possible standards. I can give you a few bullet points and ideas to take to your MSPs – whether or not you have a data centre looming over you at the moment. I’m pretty sure that none of the suggestions I’m about to make are in any way objectionable to anyone who doesn’t want to actively harm Scotland’s people or environment.

1) Energy

In order that the energy demands of the data centre do not increase prices for the people of Scotland, to be approved, a data centre must meet at least one and possibly more of the following:

a) The data centre must be entirely off-grid and powered with zero-carbon energy. This must include emergency backups such as batteries as we do not want to repeat the case being seen in America where a lack of grid connections is prompting data centre companies to install massively polluting private gas and diesel generators.

b) If grid-connected, the data centre must fund the construction of enough zero-carbon energy generators to meet its own projected needs. These generators must be installed and operating before the data centre is allowed to draw energy from the grid.

c) The data centre company must fund the construction of enough zero-carbon energy generators, with those constructed generators being donated free-of-charge to Scottish public or community ownership to offset the demands the centre will make on the grid. An alternative or complement to this would be the data centre company installing, at their own cost, rooftop solar panels on Scottish homes starting with homes living in fuel poverty.

2) Heat

The waste heat from a data centre must be captured and redirected into a local District Heating Network. If a heat network is not currently installed in the local area, the centre must be designed to plug into such a network when one becomes available. In this case, funding the construction of such a network may be counted as a contribution towards energy infrastructure requirements.

3) Water

The data centre must “do no harm” to water systems. Any water drawn from municipal networks must occur only after local residential and other essential needs are met, with the company funding the construction of additional strengthening of the water network if necessary. Additionally, waste water from the data centre must not be released into the environment or into waste networks in a less than human drinkable state.

4) Materials

In addition to usual planning requirements around local jobs and material supply, the data centre – both the building itself and the materials for the computers inside – must be designed to Net Zero and to Circular Economy standards. All materials (especially those containing critical minerals such as the computers) must be designed to minimise waste and to be reused, repurposed or remanufactured into commercial-grade products at the end of their useful life. All materials that cannot be repurposed must be compostable or fully recyclable. No materials should go to landfill or incineration.

5) Social costs

The owners shall recognise the social harms their centres and the products they are used for may cause. All social costs shall be calculated (this will include but not be limited to carbon emissions, other pollution, displacement of jobs and breaches of IP laws). The cost of these harms will be placed in bond by the company as a condition of planning approval and the bond shall be insured with unlimited liability against overruns.

Additionally, if the computers within the centre are involved in criminal activity not directly attributable to an individual (such as mass IP breaches or hacks involving rogue AIs) then the Directors of the data centre company shall accept legal liability as if they had personally committed, aided or abetted said crimes.

Will Scotland do this?

I certainly don’t think any of the conditions above are particularly controversial so I believe that the Scottish Government should be able to support these or similar as certain minimum conditions. If the data centres can meet them, then we can move on to asking questions about what use they will actually be used for and how that use will benefit the people of Scotland.

This answer to this question will be different for, for example, a centre handling NHS patient data to avoid sending that data to privacy hostile nations like the USA than it will be for an AI hyperscaler owned by a equality hostile US billionaire. In either case though, the buildings themselves have the potential to cause great harm and this must be minimised and prevented. If they can’t do this, they should not be built.