Fife has powered Scotland before and it can again, says head of company behind Auchertool data centre project
Mark Wilson is Chief Executive, ILI Group, the company behind the Cato Data Centre Project - a proposed £5 billion 600MW artificial intelligence and cloud computing facility near Auchtertool in Fife, Scotland.
Fife's industrial story has always been closely tied to energy. The region powered Scotland's homes and industries through coal for generations, while Longannet, Scotland's last coal-fired power station, stood just along the coast until its closure in 2018.
Today, as Mossmorran prepares to close, another chapter is ending.
That raises an important question: what comes next?
As Chief Executive of ILI Group, I believe Fife has an opportunity to play a leading role in Scotland's next energy and economic transition.
Our proposed Cato data centre, located on land already allocated for employment and development, is designed to harness Scotland's renewable energy resources to support the digital infrastructure that modern economies increasingly rely upon.
Data centres are becoming critical national infrastructure. As artificial intelligence, cloud computing and digital services continue to expand, demand for data processing capacity is growing rapidly. At the same time, Scotland's renewable energy generation regularly exceeds what the electricity system can currently absorb.
Put simply, we have abundant clean energy and growing demand for digital infrastructure. The challenge is how we bring the two together in a way that benefits communities and supports Scotland's long-term economic future.
The Stoics, our three proposed data centre developments in Fife, Ayrshire and North Lanarkshire, represent. more than 1.5GW of digital infrastructure.
Of course, we recognise that projects of this scale generate significant public interest and concern.
The economic opportunity is significant. Across the three Stoics projects, construction is expected to support around 4,500 jobs annually, with approximately £2.55 billion of investment expected to be captured by Scottish businesses through the supply chain.
Recent discussion at Holyrood has also demonstrated the growing interest in how Scotland approaches data centre development more broadly. The debate reflected legitimate questions about energy use, environmental impacts and community benefit. These are important issues and they deserve careful consideration.
We welcome the Scottish Government's commitment to bring forward guidance for the sector by the end of the year. Clear and consistent guidance can help communities, planning authorities and developers alike by providing greater certainty about how projects should be assessed and what standards they are expected to meet.
As a Scottish company, we support robust scrutiny. Communities should have confidence that developments are being properly assessed and that environmental standards are being upheld. Equally, investors need confidence that Scotland has a clear pathway for responsible development.
That is particularly important because Scotland is competing internationally for investment.
We are already in discussions with major operators considering Scotland as a location for significant data centre projects, and this is a global race for early power connections. Scotland's abundance of renewable energy gives us a genuine competitive advantage, but we cannot assume investment will simply arrive by default.
The opportunity is significant. No major hyperscale operator has yet established a presence in Scotland at scale. If we get this right, combining high environmental standards, meaningful community benefit and a clear regulatory framework, Scotland can become a leading hub for green digital infrastructure.
Fife has powered Scotland before. I believe it can help power the next chapter too, supporting clean energy, digital innovation and long-term economic growth
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