Scottish Project

• A Guardian investigation reveals that a landmark AI development project in rural Lanarkshire misrepresented its ability to provide renewable energy to its data center site. • While billed as a driver for jobs and prosperity, government officials and developers privately acknowledged a significant "issue" regarding the site's power provision. • The project had claimed it could channel an amount of power equivalent to a nuclear reactor, a promise that now appears to have no prospect of being met.

Exclusive: Government and developers privately acknowledged Lanarkshire datacentre site had power provision ‘issue’‘It’s smoke and mirrors’: hope turns to fear in Scottish village chosen for AI datacentreWhat are Britain’s AI growth zones and are the plans feasible or ‘complete bunk’?A landmark AI development billed as delivering jobs and prosperity has misrepresented its plans to channel a nuclear reactor’s worth of power to a site in rural Scotland, a Guardian investigation has found.When it was announced in January, the government promised that an £8.2bn AI datacentre complex in Lanarkshire – built by the US firm CoreWeave and the Scottish company DataVita – would be powered entirely from on-site renewables and built by 2030. Continue reading...