‘It’s smoke and mirrors’: hope turns to fear in Scottish village chosen for AI datacentre

Diane Davidson, a local resident, stands outside the DataVita Chapelhall datacentre, which is being extended within the AI growth zone. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian View image in fullscreen Diane Davidson, a local resident, stands outside the DataVita Chapelhall datacentre, which is being extended within the AI growth zone. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian ‘It’s smoke and mirrors’: hope turns to fear in Scottish village chosen for AI datacentre Suspicions grow in Lanarkshire that local people have been misled on supposed benefits of the huge development Revealed: landmark Scottish AI project has no prospect of meeting renewables promise What are Britain’s AI growth zones and are the plans feasible or ‘complete bunk’? T he promise was that a Scottish community would be transformed by massive investment and empowered to chase “the jobs of the future”. Instead, local people in Lanarkshire fear they may have to sell their properties and lose green belt land because of the errors of a badly planned AI datacentre complex, even as those jobs and investments never arrive. Late last year, representatives of Oakes Energy Services began to knock on doors in Newarthill, a village east of Glasgow. In letters reviewed by the Guardian, they invited residents to individual meetings. They told them about plans for a solar farm, say local people, and made offers: free solar panels, tree planting, or even cash for their properties. “It was a sweetener: don’t oppose this and you’ll be OK, kind of thing,” said Diane Davidson, a resident. “None of these sweeteners are enforceable, there’s nothing written down.” Two months later, the government chose Lanarkshire as a key site for the UK’s AI plans, announcing a multibillion-pound development called an “AI growth zone”. The project is to be built by the US company CoreWeave, and DataVita, an arm of a Glasgow real-estate firm. What will be built in Lanarkshire are AI datacentres: essentially, large buildings full of specialised silicon chips. The chips do the calculations that underpin AI models. All over the world, tech companies are ploughing hundreds of billions of dollars into building AI datacentres. They are doing this banking on the idea that AI will transform the global economy, and the datacentres will pay for themselves. To be successful, they need to quickly put up giant infrastructure projects in communities such as Newarthill. When the announcement came, the press release suggested a sprawling site – one that would bring “datacentres, supportive infrastructure, and a renewables park”. Promises came with this announcement: 3,400 new “high-value” jobs and a community fund to inject “up to £543m” into local programmes over the next few years. View image in fullscreen Construction under way beside the DataVita Chapel Hall datacentre. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian At first, the community was not concerned. “The datacentre itself is not much. It’s just a big imposing building,” said Davids