Inside Scotland’s hidden pipeline of ‘phantom’ hyperscale data centres

# What was revealed

# The public-visible pipeline A countryside charity, Action to Protect Rural Scotland (APRS), has mapped about two dozen data‑centre projects in Scotland. APRS's analysis estimates the electricity demand of those known projects at roughly 7.3 GW.

# How projects can be "hidden" Developers can enter the electricity connections process before they submit full planning applications. NESO told MSPs that some data centres on its books have connection dates that stretch into the late 2030s. Because those connection requests do not require immediate proof of planning permission, projects can be tied to particular locations and sized in the hundreds of megawatts without appearing on council planning portals.

There is no public, consolidated register for demand-side connection requests. NESO's Transmission Entry Capacity (TEC) Register makes generation projects visible — searchable by name, developer, connection site and consent status — but NESO confirmed it does not currently hold an equivalent public register for demand connections.

# Why NESO doesn't publish a demand register yet NESO responded to a Freedom of Information request saying they "do not currently have a register of demand connections." They said producing one would be a development project because the demand data exist across multiple contract systems and would need manual consolidation and checking to identify which connections are data centres.

NESO added it was considering creating a register but warned it would take considerable time to compile.

# Implications for communities and planners Without a single public list of demand connection requests, communities, local councils and journalists lack a straightforward way to find proposed large consumers of electricity tied to specific sites. That matters because hyperscale data centres can request hundreds of megawatts of capacity, and early technical entries in the grid process can shape future constraints and infrastructure planning long before a public planning application appears.

Dr Callum MacIver of the University of Strathclyde described the situation as a product of a system historically focused on supplying demand. The system is now facing large, new forms of demand that were not previously common.

# What could change NESO acknowledged that potential reforms to Britain's grid connections system could remove speculative applications that are currently on the books. Creating a public register of demand connections would increase transparency, but NESO says the work to build such a register is significant.

Until changes are made, Scotland's data‑centre pipeline will likely include projects visible in planning portals and others known only to system operators and developers.

# Bottom line There are more AI data‑centre projects tied to Scotland's electricity network than public planning records show. The lack of a consolidated, public demand‑side register means some large proposed consumers remain effectively "phantom" until later stages of development.