Thousands march in Edinburgh to protest AI data centers
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Thousands of people marched along the Royal Mile in Edinburgh to the Scottish Parliament to protest the construction of large AI data centers, part of a wave of protests across Europe. Protesters are focused on projects at Cockenzie, Larbert and Chapelcross, concerned about noise, road closures during construction and energy consumption; the proposed Chapelcross data center would have a capacity of 1000MW, while Scotland's current largest DataVita site is 12MW. The Scottish government says it will publish new data center planning guidance by the end of the year and is developing a strategy to maximize the "public interest." Planning departments must now notify ministers of new data center applications; the new planning directive also requires all new data centers with more than 50 megawatts of power capacity to submit an environmental impact assessment at the planning stage.
AI overview based on source reports · Updated 23 min ago
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- Hacker News AIThousands turn out in Edinburgh to protest against AI data centres
Thousands of people marched down Edinburgh's Royal Mile to the Scottish Parliament to protest against large-scale AI data centres, part of a wave of protests across Europe. Demonstrators carried slogans such as "AI data centres threaten humanity" and some opposed specific planned sites in Cockenzie, Larbert and Chapelcross, the last of which would have a 1,000MW capacity compared with Scotland's current largest at 12MW in Airdrie. The Scottish government said it will publish new planning guidance on data centres before the end of the year and is developing a strategy to maximise "public benefit".
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