24/09/2026
Enraged by Willie Rennies statement in an email response that there 'are appropriate' sites in Scotland for mega data centres I rushed off the following email to him:
Dear Willie,
I am sorry to say that there are no, repeat no, sites in Scotland or anywhere else on our resource depleted planet for these monsters. A better way of enriching the already have too much at the expense of the less fortunate has never been invented. They are a step too far on our dismal road to autocracy. The super wealthy are every day subverting democracy for their own ends and this is their 'Trump' card.
Sadly the politicians who should be protecting the weak are just playing into the hands of the powerful - no change there then!
Please save the planet and our democratic freedoms, not the tech bros in California.
Yours,
Andrew Mcfarlane
This is what the US congress has to say
In its simplest form, a data center is a physical facility that houses and runs large computer systems. U.S. data center annual energy use in 2023 (not accounting for cryptocurrency) was approximately 176 terawatt-hours (TWh), approximately 4.4% of U.S. annual electricity consumption that year, according to a report by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. A data center typically contains multiple computer servers, data storage devices, and network equipment that can provide information technology (IT) infrastructure service for organizations to store, manage, process, and transmit large amounts of data. Some projections show that data center energy consumption could double or triple by 2028.
In its simplest form, a data center is a physical facility that houses and runs large computer systems. U.S. data center annual energy use in 2023 (not accounting for cryptocurrency) was approximately 176 terawatt-hours (TWh), approximately 4.4% of U.S. annual electricity consumption that year, acco...
