Building hyperscale data centres with battery storage in Scotland’s central belt would not only generate investment and jobs, it would also ease grid constraints that cost consumers at least £1.5 billion each year and rising, writes Giles Hanglin, Chief Executive Officer at Apatura Energy.
With abundant renewables, a skilled workforce, a cool climate, and plentiful brownfield land, Scotland is an ideal location for the next generation of hyperscale data centres, which, over the next few years, could help drive economic renewal across central Scotland.
And far from being a drain on our natural resources, well-sited data centres would help ease grid constraints and costs that hit consumer bills each year.
At present, central Scotland has a grid bottleneck that is preventing the export of renewable electricity to England. This cost UK consumers more than £1.5 billion last year and is on course to reach £4-8 billion annually by 2030.
These costs are due to the ‘constraint payments’ paid to renewable generators to switch off – for example, on windy days – whilst gas generators in England are also paid to switch on to replace the energy which can’t reach the southern centres of demand.
However, the rapid roll-out of large-scale data centres in central Scotland, combined with large battery storage, could soak up vast amounts of this otherwise wasted electricity, reducing constraint costs for consumers and kick-starting economic renewal in areas blighted by historical industrial decline.
The economic opportunity is significant.
At Apatura, we are advancing five projects across the central belt that, if approved, would attract £12 billion in development expenditure, with an additional £30 billion in fit-out and compute.
Our flagship data centre campus at Ravenscraig is about to enter the planning stage, with the potential for early delivery in the 2020s. If approved, this development alone would bring £4.2 billion capital investment and deliver a 0.4 per cent boost to Scotland’s annual GDP, with more than 4,000 jobs per year during construction and around 2,400 long-term, skilled jobs during operation.
We have already undertaken extensive public consultation and meetings with the local community, including two public events at New College Lanarkshire, where 68 per cent of attendees expressed their support for the plans.
Why Scotland?
While the idea of a data centre is not universally popular, wherever you live in Scotland or the world, we all depend increasingly on data centres in our daily lives – from online banking to sharing files at work and watching Netflix at home. Data centres are an essential infrastructure.
Now, hyperscale computing is set to transform our lives further, with major advances in medicine and climate modelling all dependent on massive computing power, and with AI increasingly used in our daily lives.
At present, many of the data centres on which we rely are located overseas – in Ireland, Norway and the USA, for example – and we are in a global race to host the next generation of hyperscale compute. In the UK, London is home to one of the largest markets in Europe. Whilst in the Gulf, three data centres in the UAE have been destroyed in the ongoing conflict – highlighting the increasing strategic value of hosting data infrastructure in home territory.
In my view, it makes perfect sense to locate sustainably-designed hyperscale data centres here in Scotland – where we have renewable power, a cool climate, a skilled workforce, and plentiful brownfield land – and to benefit economically, rather than depend on other countries to host our data.
In this race, speed is the key, and the next two years will show if Scotland is able to grasp this once-in-a-generation opportunity.
Green credentials
Scotland’s green credentials are strong. We generate more renewable energy than we consume and therefore its carbon intensity is very low. This means a data centre in Scotland will have a much smaller carbon footprint than a comparable site in England.
Nor is water use the major hurdle that is portrayed. A modern hyperscale data centre in Scotland will use a closed-loop cooling system that is filled once and topped up only when required. To put this in context, a single major data centre would need about as much water as the Commonwealth Pool for its first fill – and of course any plans would need to be approved by the local authority, Scottish Water and SEPA.
Scotland has a genuine opportunity to become a global player in hyperscale data centres. We have the sites, the climate, renewable power, and the skills.
With timely decisions, it’s a race we can win.
