West Lothian's AI Data Centre, the Case For and Against

From outlet village to AI campus

For years I drove the B7015 into Livingston for work, and until recently I had no idea that just off the road sat a derelict shopping village.

It was once the Freeport Shopping Village, a designer outlet that opened in 1996 and drew around a million visitors in its first year (Daily Record). It closed in November 2004. Now Apatura, an energy company founded in York in 2014 that develops battery storage and data centre sites, has proposed a 250MW AI data centre there (Apatura). In this article, we will take a look at what we know about the proposal. How big would it be, and how does it compare with other data centres around the country? What do we know for sure, and what is still unknown? And what are the arguments for and against, and who stands to gain or lose?

What's proposed

Apatura's screening report to West Lothian Council describes a campus with a 250MW IT load, buildings covering around 65,000 square metres and up to about 15 metres tall, and diesel backup generators (0346/EIA/25). Alongside it would sit a 250MW battery, which needs separate consent from the Scottish Government (0390/EXC/25). The 54-hectare site takes in the old shopping village, former mine workings and fields never built on, most of it Countryside Belt (0346/EIA/25). Apatura says it has a grid connection agreement with the National Energy System Operator, through a new substation at Harburn (Apatura).

Map of the area around West Calder in West Lothian. The former Freeport Shopping Village is just north west of West Calder, with the Five Sisters Bing beside it to the east, Harburn to the south east and Livingston Designer Outlet to the north east.

• Freeport site. The former Freeport Shopping Village, where the data centre is proposed. The B7015 bounds it to the north
• Five Sisters Bing. Scheduled Monument, east of the site
• West Calder
• Harburn. Apatura names a new Harburn substation. Its exact site is not published
• Livingston Designer Outlet

The Freeport pin is the grid reference in Apatura's proposal of application notice. Other places are placed from OpenStreetMap. The new Harburn substation is not shown, because its site has not been published.

In June 2025 the council ruled that no full Environmental Impact Assessment was needed (0346/EIA/25). Since then the rules have tightened. On 16 September 2026 the Scottish Government required one for every new data centre over 50MW (Scottish Government), and the same day MSPs voted that no decisions should be made until national guidance is published, in a vote that is not binding, while rejecting an outright ban (ResultSense, The Scotsman). No full planning application has been lodged, and Apatura hopes to be running by 2029 (Apatura).

1. 1996

   Freeport Shopping Village opens

2. 2000

   Livingston Designer Outlet opens nearby

3. November 2004

   Freeport closes

4. June 2025

   West Lothian Council rules that no full Environmental Impact Assessment is needed

5. August 2025

   Apatura files a proposal of application notice, the step before a full planning application

6. 16 September 2026

   The Scottish Government requires a full assessment for new data centres over 50MW, and MSPs vote, in a vote that is not binding, for no decisions until national guidance is published

7. September 2026Where it stands

   No full planning application has been lodged

8. 2029Planned

   Apatura hopes to be running

9. 2035 at the earliestPlanned

   New power lines through Harburn are due

2029 is Apatura's target and 2035 is the grid operator's earliest date. Neither is a fact yet.

How big, and how much?

The footprint

Figures like 65,000 square metres are hard to picture. Anyone local will know the Livingston Designer Outlet, which opened in 2000 and is thought to have been one of the biggest factors in Freeport's closure (Daily Record). At around 28,000 square metres and 83 shop units (Multi-Realm), with an eight-screen Vue cinema (Livingston Designer Outlet), it is no small building. The data centre would be more than twice its size, and Apatura says it would employ 399 people on site (ResultSense).

• 105k104,635m²
• 70k69,696m²
• 65k65,000m²
• 28k27,871m²
• 7.1k7,140m²

• The O2, London
• Heathrow Terminal 5
• Freeport data centre, proposed
• Livingston Designer Outlet
• Football pitch

Footprint means the ground covered, not floor space. The O2 and Terminal 5 are worked out from their published dimensions, the pitch is the 105m by 68m size UEFA sets for top stadiums, and the Freeport figure is the developer's approximate one.

Power

At 250MW, Freeport would be more than six times the size of DataVita's data centre in Lanarkshire, which the firm said in January 2025 it was expanding to 40MW (DCD). If its servers ran flat out all year, they alone would use as much electricity as roughly 876,000 homes on Ofgem's typical figure (Ofgem), a ceiling rather than a forecast. That is also about a fifth of the 1,190MW that Torness, Scotland's last working nuclear power station, supplies to the grid (Office for Nuclear Regulation, East Lothian Courier).

The Scotsman lists more than 20 major data centre proposals in Scotland, ten of them Apatura's. Of the 19 with a published size, Freeport ranks 13th. They range from 600MW each at Auchtertool in Fife and Blackdog in Aberdeen down to 100MW at Chapelcross, while the largest AI data centre already running in Scotland has an operating capacity of just 12MW. Established sites are smaller still, such as Pulsant's at South Gyle in Edinburgh, with 3.4MW of IT power (Pulsant), and Brightsolid's in Aberdeen, which opened in 2015 with a 1MW IT load (DCD). The chart below shows a selection across that range (The Scotsman). Elsewhere in the UK, approved plans go further still. QTS's campus at Cambois in Northumberland would support 720MW of IT load (DCD), and a site at Elsham in North Lincolnshire is planned to draw 1GW (Computer Weekly). Operating sites are far smaller. VIRTUS opened London's largest data centre campus at Stockley Park in 2018, with 40MW of power capacity (DCD).

• Elsham, North Lincolnshire, England (target 2029)

  1,000MW

• Auchtertool, Fife (no target date)

  600MW

• Ravenscraig West, North Lanarkshire (target 2029)

  550MW

• Larbert, Falkirk (no target date)

  300MW

• Freeport, West Calder, West Lothian (target 2029)

  250MW

• South Gyle, Edinburgh, refused, under appeal (no target date)

  212MW

• Chapelcross, Dumfries and Galloway (target 2030)

  100MW

• VIRTUS Stockley Park, London (opened 2018)

  40MW

• DataVita DV1, Lanarkshire (opened 2016)

  12MW

• Pulsant South Gyle, Edinburgh (opened 2000)

  3.4MW

• Brightsolid, Aberdeen (opened 2015)

  1MW

Planned Scottish sites are a selection of the 19 proposals with a published size. Target dates are the developer's own, and no target date means none is published. VIRTUS Stockley Park and Brightsolid are their sizes when they opened, while Pulsant and DataVita DV1 are their sizes today. Elsham's 1GW is its total electricity draw, while Freeport, Pulsant and Brightsolid are IT load, so not every bar is measured the same way. Pulsant's South Gyle site is separate from the refused South Gyle plan. None of the planned sites is built yet.

Map of Scotland showing 23 proposed data centre sites and two operating ones. Most proposals sit in the Central Belt, with the largest at Ravenscraig and Chapelhall in North Lanarkshire, two proposals each, and at Auchtertool in Fife and Blackdog near Aberdeen at 600MW each. Freeport in West Lothian is 250MW, with a target opening of 2029. Four proposals have no published size. The operating sites shown are Pulsant in South Gyle, Edinburgh, at 3.4MW and Brightsolid in Aberdeen at 1MW.

• Ravenscraig West and East, North Lanarkshire, 1,050MW, Target opening 2029, for Ravenscraig West. Two proposals, 550MW and 500MW
• Coldstream, Borders, 300MW, Proposal date unknown
• Plains (Drumshangie), North Lanarkshire, 500MW, Proposal date unknown
• Auchtertool, Fife, 600MW, Proposal date unknown
• Larbert, Falkirk, 300MW, Proposal date unknown
• Hurlford, East Ayrshire, 540MW, Proposal date unknown
• Hunterston, North Ayrshire, Size not published, Proposal date unknown
• Newhouse, North Lanrigg Farm, North Lanarkshire, 400MW, Proposal date unknown
• Greenock, Inverclyde, 150MW, Proposal date unknown
• South Gyle, Edinburgh, 212MW, Proposal date unknown. Refused, under appeal
• Wester Hermiston, Edinburgh, 200MW, Proposal date unknown
• Freeport, West Calder, West Lothian, 250MW, Target opening 2029
• Westerhill, Bishopbriggs, East Dunbartonshire, 300MW, Proposal date unknown
• Haspielaw, Hamilton, South Lanarkshire, Size not published, Proposal date unknown
• Ochiltree, East Ayrshire, 200MW, Proposal date unknown
• Duns and Longformacus, Borders, 225MW, Proposal date unknown
• Dunbar, East Lothian, Size not published, Proposal date unknown
• Chapelhall, North Lanarkshire, 1,000MW, Proposal date unknown. Two proposals of 500MW each, one at South Lanridge Farm
• Chapelcross, Dumfries and Galloway, 100MW, Could open by 2030
• Cockenzie, East Lothian, Size not published, Proposal date unknown
• Blackdog, Aberdeen, 600MW, Proposal date unknown
• Pulsant, South Gyle, Edinburgh, 3.4MW, Opening year not published. Measured as IT power. Separate from the refused South Gyle plan
• Brightsolid, Aberdeen, 1MW, Opened 2015. Measured as IT load, when it opened

All 23 proposals on The Scotsman's list, and two of the operating Scottish sites from the chart above. It is not every data centre running in Scotland. Pins for proposals mark the named town or area, placed from OpenStreetMap, not the exact site boundary. Circle area follows the size in MW. Where two proposals share a place, the pin shows their total. Hollow rings are proposals with no published size. Operating sites are measured as IT load, so they are not measured the same way as every proposal. Opening dates are shown only where the developer has published one. None of the proposals is built.

Water

Apatura has not yet said how the campus would be cooled, and that choice matters. According to NVIDIA, cooling towers get through around 9.8 million litres of water per megawatt each year, while closed-loop systems with dry coolers can cut that to near zero (NVIDIA). On those figures, a 250MW site using cooling towers could need around 2.5 billion litres a year. Apatura's screening report expects "a negligible effect on water resources" (0346/EIA/25).

Why developers look at Scotland

There certainly appears to be a demand from companies to build data centres in the UK, so it is worth looking at what energy costs here. In 2024, UK businesses paid the highest industrial electricity prices of any International Energy Agency member with data available (Full Fact), and in July 2025 the UK Government kept a single national wholesale price, so Scotland's wind does not make its power any cheaper (Solar Power Portal). Apatura's answer is access to "35+ GW of wind, hydro, and solar capacity by 2030", and a climate "on average 3°C lower than England" that "reduces cooling costs" (0346/EIA/25). Cooling matters, because on average around half as much power again goes on cooling and other overheads (Uptime Institute). The advantage may be shrinking, though. NVIDIA says liquid cooling lets sites in warmer climates run their chillers on "just a few days a year" (NVIDIA).

The curtailment question

Scotland's wind farms produced 30.1 terawatt hours of electricity in 2024 (Scottish Government). At times the grid cannot carry that power south, so wind farms are paid to switch off and power stations further south, mostly gas, are paid to fill the gap (Modo Energy). This is known as curtailment. It cost at least £1.3 billion across Great Britain in 2025 (Montel), recovered through electricity bills (NESO). Apatura argues that data centres can help, "by capturing and reusing energy that would otherwise be curtailed" (Apatura), and Harburn sits on the grid's planned route for carrying wind power from the north of Scotland to England (NESO).

Who benefits?

Supporters point first to the money. Apatura says the campus would bring £1.7 billion of investment and £275 million of construction spending in the local supply chain (Apatura), plus 399 jobs on site and £1.5 million a year in community benefit (ResultSense). These are the developer's own figures. It says the community benefit would "attach to the data centre itself, rather than to Apatura, so it remains in place if ownership changes" (Apatura). That matters, because Apatura has sold projects before. In 2025 Drax agreed to buy three of its battery storage projects for £157.2 million (Drax).

The council may gain less than expected. Each council's grant from the Scottish Government is worked out after taking off the rates it is expected to collect, so in general more rates income means less grant (Scottish Government). An incentive scheme lets councils keep some of the extra when rates grow faster than a target, but West Lothian kept nothing under it in 2024-25 (Scottish Government).

Then there is the site itself, empty since 2004, which West Lothian Council has said it supports redeveloping or re-using (Daily Record). Apatura is also exploring whether waste heat could warm a glasshouse or feed a local heating network (0346/EIA/25). Gregor Poynton, the local MP, summed up the cautious welcome. "Investment and good jobs are welcome in West Lothian, but any development must work for local communities and protect our environment," he said (Edinburgh News).

Who loses out?

Now for the other side. Apatura's screening report says the campus would need diesel backup generators. The battery would reduce reliance on them at times, but a mix of the two "remains necessary". The nearest homes, in West Calder and at nearby farms, are around 300 to 350 metres from the site boundary, the noise mitigation needed is still to be worked out with the council, and the report expects more vehicles on local roads for good (0346/EIA/25). Part of the site is Countryside Belt, which the council's policy says exists to keep towns visually separate, protect their landscape setting and give people green space (West Lothian Council), although Apatura argues the site is not visually prominent (0390/EXC/25).

Jobs are the other sticking point. Sue Webber MSP wrote that "data centres don't employ many people, so the longer-term economic impact in the immediate area is minimal" (Edinburgh News), and the environmental think tank Verdant argues that they "create dramatically fewer jobs per unit of electricity demand than steelworks, car plants, hospitals, or schools" (Verdant). A UK Government spokesperson called this way of measuring jobs "deeply misleading" (ResultSense).

Then there is the grid. The Scotsman says that if all the proposed data centres in Scotland were approved, they could use up to 6,000MW, more than 1.5 times Scotland's current peak demand, and the sites on its list with a published size in fact add up to 6,927MW (The Scotsman). The new power lines through Harburn are not due until 2035 at the earliest, six years after Apatura hopes to be running (NESO). At Apatura's separate 300MW proposal in Larbert, more than 7,000 objections were lodged (ResultSense), with campaigners there arguing that its demand for power would put pressure on consumer bills (Bricks & Bytes).

What we don't know yet

Quite a lot. We do not yet know how the campus would be cooled, how much water it would use, how many generators it would need, how much energy the battery could store, or who would own or run it. Even the substation is unclear, as Apatura's battery screening report twice refers to "Grangemouth Substation" (0390/EXC/25). The plans can be followed on West Lothian Council's planning portal under reference 0625/PAC/25 (West Lothian Council).

1/3

Freeport and the Five Sisters, 2006

Photo by Richard Webb, "Freeport and the Five Sisters", geograph.org.uk, CC BY-SA 2.0

The arcade courtyard at the Freeport site today

Photo by Coconut Island Drones

A glass kiosk left standing at the Freeport site

Photo by Coconut Island Drones

Closing thoughts

So where does that leave us? On Apatura's own figures, a site empty for over 20 years would bring £1.7 billion of investment, 399 jobs and £1.5 million a year for the community. Against that sit diesel generators and more traffic 300 to 350 metres from people's homes, the loss of Countryside Belt fields, doubts over the jobs, and a grid that at times cannot carry Scotland's wind power south. Any application would now need a full environmental assessment, and MSPs have said, in a vote that is not binding, that no decisions should be made until national guidance is published.

Whatever happens at Freeport, the genie is out of the bottle. AI needs far more computing power than anything that came before it, and there is no sign of that demand slowing. We could no more stop it than we could have stopped the rise of the internet, or any other disruptive technology before it.

What matters now is how we use that computing power. Like any resource, it can be used responsibly or wasted. Used well, AI has already shown how valuable it can be on some of the toughest problems science and technology have faced.

The trouble is that we only ever see one side of the ledger. We can measure exactly how much electricity a data centre uses, but not how much energy and human time its computing saves elsewhere. There are countless examples, but one will do.

Britain's own grid is a good one. Solar power is hard to predict, so the control room keeps extra power in reserve in case clouds cut output. Since December 2022, NESO has used a machine learning forecast that is 2.8 times more accurate than its old one for the next two hours (NESO). Open Climate Fix, the non-profit that built it, puts the saving at over £30 million and 300,000 tonnes of CO2 a year (Open Climate Fix). On a global scale, the International Energy Agency estimates that existing AI applications could cut emissions by far more than data centres produce, though far less than tackling climate change needs (IEA). One might argue that examples like this show the potential of our new computing capabilities to save far more energy than they use, but across the whole economy the size of that saving is very hard to prove. But I accept that this is contested, and not everyone agrees.

The chips themselves are also improving quickly. According to Epoch AI, the energy efficiency of leading AI chips has historically improved by around 40% a year (Epoch AI), and the largest cloud companies expect their servers to last five to six years, going by their own accounts (WireSift). If that trend held, the chips bought to replace a site's first ones five years on would do around five times the work for each watt. That would not make a site like Freeport use less power, because it would still be built for 250MW of IT load. But each megawatt would do far more, so the question of what we use it for only grows.

A data centre's costs are relatively easy to count, in footprint, materials and megawatts. Its benefits are not, because they depend on what we ask it to do. This new wave of computing power is coming, whether we like it or not, so the real question is what we point it at. If we put more of it to work on the climate problem itself, on cleaner grids, better forecasts and using less energy, I believe it can be a net positive, giving back far more than it takes.