Scotland should be leading the green data centre revolution - Jaap Röell

It’s easy to forget that booking your theatre or football tickets or ordering your weekly shop on your smart phone relies on the transfer of data which must be processed and stored somewhere. The Cloud sounds nice, but rather than ethereal and fluffy it's arrays of computer servers working round the clock to keep modern lives ticking over.

The explosion of computer power has produced a surge in demand for secure and reliable data storage, but with it has come the rapid spread of scare stories largely based on early data centres in places like Texas and California with a very different climate to Scotland and little resemblance to proposed centres here.

The scaremongers claim they are vast, ugly factories which drain reservoirs, suck electricity from nearby homes, belch pollution, create a constant unliveable hum, and bring no benefit to local economies. But the truth here is very different.

Roxburghe Estates’ proposal for the Southside data centre near Longformacus in the Borders will, we believe, set new standards for the design and operation of a sustainable, sensitive and efficient approach to what should become as essential a part of national infrastructure as the road network and National Grid.

In fact, the National Grid, or its lack of capacity, is one of the reasons our location is ideal, because of the proximity of windfarms which are regularly switched off because the grid can’t cope, and Southside can actually help prevent the waste of approximately £50 million worth of lost energy potential every year.

For that reason, the intervention of EDF Energy’s UK chief executive Simone Rossi last week was timely, arguing that attention should switch from expanding wind and solar power to growing demand for the excess energy currently being lost, including investment in data centres.

When the wind doesn’t blow, back-up can come from the recently approved Sheilburn battery energy storage system, and even if that ran out, it will connect to the 400 KV grid on site. The final layer of power resilience is the nearby gas main, so the reserve systems are clean, not polluting diesel generators some US centres have used.

Data centres need connections and the site is near the fibreoptic cable link with England, and few sites in Scotland have renewable energy, gas back-up and data links all virtually on one place, and in such an isolated location very rare outages wouldn’t affect thousands of homes.

As we all know, Scotland is naturally cool, and by using closed loop colling systems, there is no need for vast amounts of water to keep server temperatures under control, and at Southside we plan to use a rainwater recovery system for when the coolers need topping up.

We cannot deny that the three two-storey buildings are large – the total footprint of the buildings is the equivalent of 14 football fields, not the ridiculous claim of 200 pitches made by an MSP in the Scottish Parliament this week − but they will be designed with environmentally-sensitive green roofs planted with local moorland species, screened by planted earth mounds created from the construction spoil, to blend into a natural hollow with very limited visibility.

As custodians of Borders countryside, Roxburghe Estates continually invests in conservation and we are currently carrying out a major moorland programme on 4,500 hectares of upland farming land at Byrecleugh and Rawburn near Longformacus to enhance biodiversity. By contrast, the Southside buildings cover just eight hectares, set in a wider area of 52 hectares for wetland enhancements and the planting of willow and other native species.

We are not just committed to environmental sustainability, but also the region’s economic welfare and it’s often forgotten that Roxburghe Estates directly employs some 150 staff and provides 250 affordable homes and the Southside data centre is part of our long term investment to safeguard its future.

At a conservative estimate, the centre will support 145 permanent, high quality jobs and it is also our aim to work with local schools and colleges to provide education and training for the workforce of the future, and we will explore ways the heat generated by the servers can be used for a district heating system.

Southside is expected to generate £25 million for the Scottish economy annually, and boost the Borders economy by approximately £12 million a year. Over 15 years, it is estimated the improved connectivity, data processing and cloud access could benefit the Scottish Borders area by an additional £47 million, and generate at least £967 million in tax revenues, a third of which will be non-domestic rates to support local services.

We do want to hear what local people think and for them to help us shape our plan, and we have already held two public consultation events attended by around 200 people, and there will be more as we move towards submitting a planning application later this year.

There are, of course, some who are implacably opposed to data centres, not just this one, and fake imagery and anonymised petitions do not help their cause. Mapping Scotland’s technological future needs rational debate, but Scotland has already identified green data centres as nationally significant infrastructure.

The question is not whether we need more digital capacity, but whether Scotland chooses to host that investment itself or continue exporting the economic benefits elsewhere. Southside meets all five principles behind the new green data centre charter, and we believe it demonstrates that digital infrastructure, environmental stewardship and rural economic development can work together.

Jaap Röell is Chief Executive of Roxburghe Estates.