(Image: SOF)
Outlander star Sam Heughan has revealed how hyperscale data centre plans, including one close to his home outside Glasgow, helped turn him into an outspoken critic of Scotland’s data-centre boom.
He also says he is actively trying to avoid using the artificial intelligence technology many data centres are being built to support, warning that it threatens actors and creativity and could make society “lazy” and "less clever".
“I'm worried as an actor," he says, "about people being able to use my image and people being fooled by other people using AI. I'm also worried to read of AI data centres where they feed it full of literature and throw the literature away, leaving the AI to regurgitate it. It's not producing anything new, it's just regurgitating and actually making us less clever in a way.”
Recent months have seen Heughan emerge as one of the key voices in the anti data centre movement, backing calls for a moratorium on new hyperscale data centre applications and getting behind the campaign against the Say No To Larbert Data Centre campaign.
Sam Heughan made his name starring as Jamie Fraser in Outlander (Image: Sony Pictures)
“At the moment it feels as if,” he says, “we are being assaulted by data centre proposals. There are over 20 of them proposed across Scotland. And most recently, they announced the biggest one in the world for Dumfries and Galloway, which is my homeland or hometown - a region that was just announced as the sixth 'Must Visit Destination in the World' by National Geographic”.”
According to the National Energy System Operator (NESO), there were, as of last month, currently 28 proposals in the consent queue for the grid in Scotland, representing nearly 8.9GW, a figure which is around twice Scotland's current winter peak demand.
He adds: “Personally, I don't know why we're investing in it at all as a nation. I think we have so much more to offer.”
Though Heughan’s concern is over the wide rush of data centre planning proposals, particular data centre proposals have a personal resonance for him. Chapelcross in Dumfries and Galloway, Southside Data Centre in the Lammermuirs and Bishopbriggs outside Glasgow.
“Horrifically,” he says, “I found out that they're building a hyperscale data centre close to my house outside Glasgow.”
The actor, author and businessman was first alerted to the issue while hiking the Southern Upland Way for his next book, a follow up to Waypoints, his memoir of walking the West Highland Way.
While crossing the Lammermuirs he came across tense community friction over the Southside Data Centre, a 225MW hyperscale centre proposed by the Duke of Roxburghe’s estate which has been the trigger for a major local backlash against what campaigners describe as the industrialisation of this “remote” landscape.
Love of Scotland's landscape runs like a thread through Heughan’s perspective on data centres and their impact, his hiking and appreciation of nature, and the tourist draw of Outlander, the smash series in which he starred as Jamie Fraser.
Data centres have traditionally been an urban and industrial feature, clustered around cities and established infrastructure, but the new generation of hyperscale campuses is increasingly pushing development on to much larger greenfield sites, and even remote, wilder spots like the Lammermuirs.
“As a Scotsman,” he says, “and someone very proud of what we've got here, and the tourism I've seen that we've built around Outlander. And I just think that we need to protect the reason that people are coming here.
"They're coming here to see this amazing countryside and this land that we've got with a great history. And we have so much to offer. I just don't know why, we're putting our time energy into something that's poisonous.
“On my hikes across Scotland I’ve seen remote wild spaces. I've been the only person I've seen for a number of days. And I've seen so much wildlife. It's incredible what we have here in Scotland And I honestly would question the Scottish Government say, why are we investing in that? With all that we have to offer the world, why are we investing in data centres?”
He also notes: "I witnessed the wind farms that provide unlimited green energy to Scotland and could make us energy rich. I know they’re not always in the best location and some local communities dislike their placement, but for me they could make Scotland extremely wealthy.
"We could be generating vast amounts of clean energy and the nation and communities could benefit exponentially. Especially with climate change, we will have more extreme weather and could at least harness that to benefit the nation, selling surplus energy to other countries. I’d rather see a field of windmills than an industrial park.”
On his Lammermuirs walk, he recalls, he spent time with the community at Longformacus, and also “chatted to the Duke of Roxburghe and the government body which is behind the data centre”.
A member of Save The Lammermuirs Campaign who are against the proposed data centre in the Lammermuir Hills near Longformacus in the Scottish Borders. (Image: Colin Mearns)
“I think they made a very compelling case for it being there, if you were to build a data centre and thought it was a good idea in the first place.”
By speaking with both the Duke and campaigners for his book, he says, he wants to help “everyone to make their own judgment and be educated about it.”
But, he says, he found it "hard for me to remain in the middle because it's quite glaringly obvious to me that these are not benefitting anyone".
Often, in his conversations with landowners, developers and government bodies, he has heard the phrase, “We don’t want to be left behind.”
“That feels like a baby boomer statement. How are we getting left behind? We are told we need them because we use AI every day. I keep hearing that term, ‘left behind’, but I don't understand it. I don't get it personally, but maybe that's because, you know, I'm an actor and I'm certainly not a politician.”
Heughan tries to use AI as little as possible, and questions whether we want to embrace the AI technologies that the data centres are set to support. “As an actor, I really am completely against AI. I think it is encroaching on any creativity and making us lazy...
"I’m not naïve enough to say that I've never used it, but I am trying not to.”
He adds, “I don’t want to stop the human race or us to develop and advance. But it needs very strong legislation, of course.”
Read More:
- Here is what Sam Heughan, aka Jamie from Outlander, is like in real life
- What Lammermuirs data centre fight says about land and power
- Could data centres solve Scotland’s wind power curtailment problem?
- £16.5bn data centre plans submitted at Chapelcross
For him the data centres and the AI technology they support are linked and problematic. The proposals, he notes “appear to have arrived overnight”, alongside “warnings from the AI companies that they can't even control it and are afraid”.
“So, why are we so eager to sort of help this fast development? Why don't we just sit back and wait? Other countries have done that. Why do we not go and invest in housing or tourism or power or, rewilding. I think there's so much more that we could be doing.”
With so many data centres proposed, the Scottish Government is playing catch-up, promising new guidance on planning in December.
“Why are we even investing in this,” he asks, “and why are we feeling like Scotland needs these? I know bringing business to Scotland is obviously very important, but I would argue that there are other things that we could be investing in, especially as a large landowner.”
“AI data centres certainly don't employ many people. But, of course, the landowners want them and the developers do because there's a lot of money in it.”
Heughan is pro-business – the co-owner of the Galloway Distillery, as well as an actor. He is also, increasingly, an environmental campaigner and many of the chosen charities which he works with every year for his Peak Challenge are environmental and include One Tree Planted, Ocean Conservancy and the WWF.
Sam Heughan is the co-owner of the Galloway Distillery, as well as an actor (Image: Stewart Attwood)
“I suppose I am an environmentalist, but I'm also a businessman. You know, I have the Galloway Distillery. I have a number of businesses. And so I want to see communities benefit from these, but also we want to, you know, have as low an environmental impact as possible.”
“I'm so proud,” he says, “to have been born and raised in Scotland and I cherish that upbringing that I've had and the fact that I can go to Loch Lomond or go hiking and suddenly find myself in a wilderness surrounded by nature and not data centres, makes me feel like I'm very privileged, but I also want to protect that.”
It’s from this perspective that he questions whether this is what Scotland should be investing in.
Heughan’s involvement in the anti-data centre campaign across Scotland hasn’t only involved speaking out in the media. He also writes to politicians and tries to have a positive impact in Dumfries and Galloway, the area in which he was born and raised, till age 12, and now co-owns a distillery.
“I was told recently that Dumfries and Galloway, which is my home region, is going to have the biggest data centre. And I asked local politicians again, is this really what we want to be known for? And they told me, no, it's fine. And that the locals are happy. And I thought, well, the locals probably don't know about it, and the ones that do are probably not happy.”
The proposed CX Technology Campus at Chapelcross would be larger in stated data-centre capacity than any campus currently operating.
He wants to help, but also acknowledges that with this campaigning he is putting “people’s noses out”. He describes himself as “close” with government bodies, especially in the south of Scotland, where he “wants to help the area and to grow the distillery, and build other projects and bring people down there to see what an amazing landscape it is and what amazing communities we have”.
Heughan heaps praise on some of the community groups involved in the backlash, which he describes as “amazing”.
“There have been over 15 community groups that have come together. The campaigners in the Lammermuirs are so eloquent - and they've never done this before. They've never stood up and protested or had a voice. And I think it's unfair to put the pressure on local communities to do to do this.”
“I think the people of Scotland don't want these. data centres The landowners do and the developers do, but the local communities, when they find out, and a lot of them don't find out till very late. I didn't find out about mine here at Bishopbriggs till quite late. And actually, there has been very little press about it here.
"It feels underhand, and it feels like the local communities don't want them.”
Does he see opposing data centres as a cause or personal mission? “I suppose,” he says, “it has become a cause, but it's not one that I particularly wanted.
“It is a big cause for me now because I so strongly believe that no one is benefiting from this other than the landowners and developers. We don’t even know what the long-term impact is. They are trying to sell it to us as a green data centre and there's just no such thing. Scotland is supposed to be trying to decarbonise. We're just going the opposite direction - and I think we should be at the forefront. We should be at the forefront of protecting the incredible landscape we have. "