The AI revolution is not hanging around – we need to make hard choices

The Herald Scotland

a day ago

Although tourism doesn't dominate in cash terms – financial services is by far the biggest at over £7bn – it certainly does in employment, supporting over 30,000 jobs, with accommodation and food the city's third biggest employment sector behind health services (56,000) and finance and insurance (42,000). Education is fourth with 36,000. Unless someone blows up the Castle and closes the hotels, tourism will always be here, so no wonder councillors are already salivating at the prospect of raising £40m annually after the Tourist Tax – sorry, Visitor Levy – is introduced next year.
Publicly funded health services aren't going anywhere, in both senses, but alarm bells should be ringing off the walls in other sectors about the challenges – not quite threats as yet – of technological advances now unfolding at breakneck speed, so vital for the future of both financial services and higher education. The issue is the need for data to drive artificial intelligence and the vast amounts of energy required, and a growing number of applications for battery storage and data centres are coming forward in South Scotland to tap into the new demand.
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One such project is a data centre at Hermiston unveiled last week by York-based energy company Apatura which specialises in large-scale data centres and battery infrastructure. It's involved with seven Central Belt sites, including an expression of interest to have part of the old Ravenscraig steelwork site included in a UK Government AI Growth Zone (AIGZ) programme.
The AIGZ scheme, to which the UK Government has committed £2.5bn, is designed to speed up the regulatory and planning processes such significant projects normally face, but the criteria for inclusion are strict. There must be access to adequate power, a plentiful water supply for cooling, and at least 100 acres of developable land which will face few obstacles in obtaining planning permission by 2028, barely two years away.
Apatura won't have considered the Hermiston project for AIGZ status because it's on Green Belt land and while Hermiston might suggest big roundabouts and a car-clogged retail park, this site is pleasant farmland off the A71 across from the Dalmahoy hotel and country club. It is, however, a short cable's length from Heriot Watt University's Riccarton campus, a national centre of computing and engineering excellence. As latency – the delay between data generation and its use – is of critical importance, the closer the data centre is to its customers the better, so across the road from Heriot-Watt would therefore be ideal.
It should therefore be worthy of serious consideration if it comes to a formal planning application and the scheme has been submitted to Edinburgh Council for the pre-application process to flag up key issues, and there will now be two public consultation events at, guess where, Heriot-Watt's National Robotarium. Apatura's public communication seems minimal for such a significant proposal on what in planning terms is a difficult site, which might indicate the company either knows it's a long shot or has an inkling the path might be smoothed.
Battery storage (Image: Newsquest)
But the fact it's Green Belt is inescapable and perfectly reasonable proposals to build single houses on the site of old barns have been rejected for that reason. I recall an application for facilities for disabled people on the site of disused farm buildings in nearby Bonaly being rejected because the Green Belt was sacrosanct. Even if Edinburgh planners are prepared to make an exception to a local development blueprint only approved two years ago, the chances of years of opposition and court challenges must be high, and it could take over four years to turn schemes on contentious sites into reality.
Data centres and battery storage facilities (there is a live application for a battery scheme just up the road for a field in Curriehill) are not usually constructions of great architectural beauty, essentially boxes of one size or another, but the necessity of having huge volumes of data in the AI age, particularly for research institutions, is beyond question. And if Edinburgh and the surrounding authorities reject such projects the applicants will simply go elsewhere and give the universities a serious headache.
Much has been written about the collapse of the lucrative overseas post-graduate market, but inadequate access to data processing will be as damaging, if not more so, in the ultra-competitive battle for research investment. For Edinburgh and Heriot-Watt to be hit by both would be catastrophic, potentially turning them into glorified polytechnics.
When Edinburgh's City Plan 2030 framework was being drawn up, few had heard of data centres, and they certainly didn't feature in the discussions. And the Scottish Government's Energy Consents Unit moves at a glacial pace which, like the planning system, is simply unfit for the challenges of the new era.
The AIGZ initiative is designed to address such problems, but it's limited to sites where the planning process is relatively straightforward. And in Scotland don't even think about the obvious solution of small nuclear to provide reliable power instead of acres of batteries, solar panels and wind turbines.
Hard choices need to be faced about a planning blueprint inadequate for housing demand, never mind new technology. The AI revolution is not hanging around for planning officers to reach conclusions, so let's hope the tourists keep coming.