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Sustainable Planet

Big idea · a national argument

The AI & Energy Clash

AI is devouring power — so put the data centres where the wind is wasted, and warm homes with the heat.

An argument we're making — not a data centre we'd build. Where and how data centres get built is national infrastructure. Our role is to champion a smarter, community-minded model for the ones already heading to Scotland — clean power in, warm homes out — and to ask the right questions of the developers and decision-makers who can act on it.

AI is hungry for electricity, and the lazy answer is to plug data centres into the grid wherever it's cheapest and let gas fill the gap. But Scotland already makes more clean wind than the grid can carry — and pays the turbines to switch off. The big idea: site data centres where that wind is wasted, run them on curtailed, non-fossil power, and pipe their waste heat into community heating.

The clash

The data centres that train and run AI are enormously power-hungry, and demand is climbing fast. Plug them into a congested grid and they pull in whatever's on the margin — too often gas. More computing, more carbon. Unless we're cleverer about where the power comes from and where the demand sits.

The paradox — clean power we already waste

The transmission grid between Scotland and England is too small to carry all the wind we generate, so wind farms are routinely paid to switch off. In 2025 Scotland curtailed more than 10 TWh of wind — enough to power every Scottish home for a year — and we paid around £343m for it, with northern Scotland alone losing roughly 39% of the wind it could have produced. Since the start of 2026 those constraint payments have already passed £1bn. Our own EnviroWatch wind-curtailment tracker shows the local farms being switched off, live.

The idea — put the demand where the wind is

Instead of forcing wind off the system, site data centres where that wind is wasted and let them soak it up: a "wind-native" data centre, running on curtailed, non-fossil electricity. A large, flexible load that can lean into the wind is exactly what a wind-rich grid needs — it turns a problem (too much wind, nowhere to send it) into a use, and relieves the grid rather than competing with it.

Don't throw away the heat

A data centre turns almost all of its electricity into heat, and today most of that is simply dumped into the air. Pipe it into a community heat network instead and it can warm homes, schools and leisure centres. The waste heat is low-grade — typically around 15–60 °C — so a heat pump boosts it to the temperature a heating network needs, using the same proven kit we'd install anyway.

How far can the heat reach?

Not far cheaply — and that's the whole point. Heat loss in a well-built network is roughly 1% per kilometre, so community heating works best when homes are close to the source (a good network keeps total losses under about 15%). On our EnviroWatch data-centres map we've drawn indicative heat-provision zones around each site: strong within about 2 km, workable to about 5 km with large "anchor" buildings, and only worth a dedicated transmission main beyond that. Where a town sits inside the green or amber ring, its homes could be warmed.

Where it could happen in Scotland

We've mapped the real and proposed sites — explore them on the EnviroWatch data-centres layer:

  • Ravenscraig — a proposed £3.9bn AI campus on the old Motherwell steelworks, with homes right next door: the best heat-reuse case on the map.
  • Cromarty Firth / Inverness Green Freeport — windy north, deep-water port and land: the natural home for a wind-native centre, with Invergordon and Alness close by.
  • Chapelcross (near Annan) — a proposed ~1 GW campus deliberately paired with nearby renewables, but rural, so heat reuse is harder.
  • DataVita, Eurocentral — already runs on 100% renewable electricity today (proof the model works) but currently vents its heat.

Right here in Moray

This isn't abstract for us. Forres sits in the very part of Scotland where wind is wasted most, and the town — homes, Forres Academy, the leisure centre and swimming pool — is compact enough that waste heat could reach it with small losses. We're not proposing to build anything; we've pinned an illustrative concept at Forres on the map to show what a local version could look like, and to make the idea real for the developments already coming to Scotland.

This is real, not sci-fi

London's Old Oak & Park Royal scheme will heat around 9,000 homes from data-centre waste heat; networks in Birmingham (Tyseley) and at Gatwick/Crawley do the same; and Scottish Enterprise has published a strategic review identifying data-centre heat reuse as the most scalable heat-recovery opportunity in Scotland. Across Scandinavia, heating towns from waste heat is routine.

What we're honest about

  • This is national infrastructure — we influence and enable, we don't decide. SP's role is advocate and community champion, not "SP builds a data centre".
  • Data centres also use water and land, and must be built responsibly — the point is to do it well, not to wave it through.
  • "Wind-native" doesn't mean it only runs when it's windy — it means siting and flexing demand to use clean power that would otherwise be lost, backed by storage and a smarter grid.
  • The figures here are from public sources and should be re-verified before we quote them in print.

What we're calling for

When data centres are built in Scotland — and they will be — they should:

  • be powered as far as possible by renewable electricity that would otherwise be curtailed;
  • be sited and designed so their waste heat warms nearby communities through a heat network;
  • be held to real standards on water, land and transparency.

Clean power in, warm homes out.

What do you think?

This is a concept to pressure-test, not a finished plan — and that's the point. Tell us where it's right, where it's wrong and what we've missed. And if you think it's worth testing properly, back the next step: we've opened a cause to fund a short, independent feasibility briefing for Moray — and to gather the local expertise to write it.

Back the feasibility briefing → Tell us what you think ← All big ideas

The computing-and-heat answer to our Wasted Wind, Higher Bills case — a sibling to Curtailed-Wind Green Hydrogen. Sources: Scottish wind curtailment of 10+ TWh and ~£343m in 2025, ~39% of northern Scottish wind constrained off, and £1bn+ in constraint payments since the start of 2026 (Elexon / NESO balancing data; energy-sector reporting). Data-centre waste heat is low-grade (~15–60 °C), boosted by heat pumps; district-heat networks lose roughly 1% per km and best-in-class systems stay under ~10–15% (peer-reviewed heat-network studies; Scottish Enterprise, "Waste Heat from Data Centres: a Strategic Review for Scotland"). Heat-reuse schemes: Old Oak & Park Royal ~9,000 homes (OPDC), Tyseley (Birmingham), Gatwick/Crawley. Scottish data-centre sites: Ravenscraig £3.9bn regeneration; Chapelcross ~1 GW (CX Tech); DataVita (Eurocentral); Cromarty Firth / Inverness Green Freeport (industry reporting). Figures indicative, October 2026.