Scotland is considering the power stations, storage facilities and transmission lines required for a larger electricity system while the UK Government prepares to decide which major consumers should receive priority access to that network.
A Scottish Government environmental-information disclosure recorded 184 live energy applications within the process leading to determination. Of those, 115 had been in the system for more than a year and 52 had remained unresolved for longer than two years.
Only 29 had been live for six months or less.
An accompanying Energy Consents Unit register contains 1,728 records, including completed, refused, withdrawn, pre-application and active cases. Modern Scot identified 188 development applications carrying active procedural statuses: 75 in consultation, 49 under consideration, 29 at application stage, 27 referred to the Planning and Environmental Appeals Division and eight at determination.
The four-case difference between the waiting-time table and the active records identified in the register is not explained in the published material. It may reflect different reporting dates or classifications.
The active cases include 89 wind farms, 46 overhead power-line developments and 34 battery-storage projects. The remaining cases cover solar, hydro, gas and hybrid schemes.
The queue therefore extends beyond renewable generation. It includes much of the infrastructure required to move electricity from where it is produced, store it when supply exceeds immediate demand and release it when the system requires additional power.
At the same time, Britain is moving away from a connections system that largely rewarded an applicant’s place in the queue.
The UK Government has proposed arrangements allowing network capacity to be reserved or reassigned to electricity users judged to be of strategic national importance. Data centres and AI Growth Zones are expressly included among the categories that could benefit.
The proposals would operate across Great Britain through the electricity connections regime. Scottish ministers determine certain major generating stations, storage projects and power lines, but they do not control the wider system through which data centres and other large consumers obtain network connections.
Under the proposed arrangements, the National Energy System Operator and network companies could reserve future capacity for selected developments, redirect capacity released when other projects withdraw and give strategic demand projects priority within future transmission-planning rounds.
The consultation has closed, but the final policy has not yet been published. Ofgem is developing related reforms intended to remove speculative demand projects from the queue, assess whether applicants are capable of proceeding and establish a mechanism for prioritising developments considered strategically valuable.
Generation and storage projects have already been reorganised through the Gate 1 and Gate 2 process.
Projects receiving Gate 2 status are given a place in the revised connection pipeline and a full connection offer. Gate 1 projects may remain within the system but do not retain a guaranteed queue position, reserved capacity or confirmed connection date.
Large demand projects are now undergoing their own reform.
Ofgem says the demand queue contains applications that may never be built while more credible developments remain unable to connect because network capacity is blocked. It also says the current system lacks a means of giving priority to demand projects judged to have national value.
Data centres are among the sectors identified.
The UK Government’s consultation reported approximately 140 data-centre projects in the transmission queue, representing about 50GW of requested capacity. That figure did not include every data-centre development seeking a distribution connection.
A parliamentary answer published in June placed combined transmission and distribution capacity allocated to data-centre applications across Britain at approximately 72.8GW. The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero said it could not provide the number or total capacity of projects located in Scotland.
The absence of a Scottish figure leaves a gap in public oversight.
Scotland is processing transmission lines, substations, generating stations and storage facilities without a published account of how much future network capacity is being sought by data-centre developers, where those applications are located or when they expect to connect.
Scotland exported a net 20.8 terawatt-hours of electricity during 2025, but an annual surplus does not mean power is available without limit at every location and hour. Electricity must pass through networks with finite capacity and be balanced continuously against demand.
At the end of March 2026, Scotland had 1,236 renewable-energy projects in the planning pipeline, with an estimated combined capacity of 85.4GW. Storage proposals accounted for 41.8GW, including 32.8GW of battery capacity.
Many of those projects will not be built. Some will be refused, withdrawn, redesigned or found commercially unviable. The figures nevertheless show the volume of competing claims now being placed upon land, planning authorities, environmental bodies and the electricity network.
The eight development cases marked at determination stage in the Energy Consents Unit register are dominated by grid and storage infrastructure rather than new wind farms.
They include overhead lines or grid connections at Lorg, Quoich, Peterhead-to-Persley and Burghmuir, storage projects at Spittal, Hagshaw and Sloy, and the combined Rogerhill solar and battery development.
The register does not identify any of those projects as serving a particular data centre. Large network developments normally support wider areas of generation and demand.
The disclosure therefore does not prove that Scotland’s consent backlog was created to restrain data-centre development or to hold electricity capacity for selected companies. There is no published evidence that Scottish ministers instructed officials to delay energy projects for that purpose.
It does show that a large proportion of Scotland’s generating, storage and transmission infrastructure remains within a prolonged consent process while the UK Government prepares a system under which selected major consumers may receive priority treatment.
The clearest Scottish example is the Lanarkshire AI Growth Zone, centred on DataVita’s Chapelhall site and being developed with CoreWeave.
The UK Government announced the designation with company-supplied projections of £8.2 billion in private investment and more than 3,400 jobs. It said the project remained conditional upon agreed milestones and legal and regulatory requirements.
The announcement did not state its requested grid capacity, connection point or confirmed connection date.
AI Growth Zones are expressly identified in the strategic-demand consultation as developments that could receive priority.
The consultation says the government intends to publish a list of demand projects considered strategically important. It proposes allowing network capacity to be reserved or reassigned to those projects and aligning future data-centre connections with regional targets established through a national data-centre strategy.
A worked example describes a hypothetical AI Growth Zone for which government and network bodies identify 500MW of possible future capacity.
In that example, an established developer has credible plans but has not secured all necessary land rights or submitted a grid-connection application. Capacity could still be reserved after the government signals its intention to designate the area.
The example is not evidence that capacity has been reserved for Lanarkshire or any other Scottish project. It does show that the proposed framework could protect future electricity capacity for a strategically selected development before it had completed steps ordinarily expected of an applicant.
Pressure for stronger controls in Scotland has increased as the number and scale of proposed data centres have grown.
A Scottish Parliament motion lodged in June called for a national planning moratorium on hyperscale data centres until their combined effects on electricity demand, decarbonisation, air quality and household bills could be assessed.
The motion stated that announced developments could require at least 6,000MW of power. That is a figure advanced in a political motion rather than a national calculation produced by the Scottish Government.
Ministers told Parliament that the government had not completed a national climate-impact assessment of hyperscale data centres and was working with the National Energy System Operator, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency and Scottish Water to assess their cumulative demands.
No national moratorium has been introduced.
National Planning Framework 4 continues to treat green data centres as national development, although ministers are considering whether further coordination or planning guidance is needed.
The final selection system will be controlled largely by the UK Government, Ofgem, NESO and the network companies.
A government-backed data centre may have a case for priority where it supports national security, research, industrial capacity or substantial employment. The same decision could place a privately operated computing facility ahead of housing, manufacturing, public services or existing Scottish businesses seeking access to a constrained network.
The strategic-demand consultation says selected projects will be published. It does not yet provide the final criteria, scoring system, level of Scottish representation or means by which an unsuccessful applicant could challenge the decision.
The Scottish consent backlog has not been shown to be part of a plan to reserve electricity for selected data centres. The connection reforms do, however, create the machinery through which government-backed projects could receive capacity ahead of ordinary applicants.
Until the selected projects, criteria and Scottish capacity allocations are published, the public will not know who has been placed at the front of the new queue.
Sources
Scottish Government — Total live energy applications awaiting determination by Scottish Ministers: EIR release
https://www.gov.scot/publications/foi-202600505645/
Scottish Government — Energy Consents Unit case register, Document1 (1).xls
Spreadsheet released with the environmental-information response and analysed by Modern Scot.
Department for Energy Security and Net Zero — Accelerating electricity network connections for strategic demand
https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/accelerating-electricity-network-connections-for-strategic-demand
Department for Energy Security and Net Zero — Accelerating electricity network connections for strategic demand: accessible consultation document
https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/accelerating-electricity-network-connections-for-strategic-demand/accelerating-electricity-network-connections-for-strategic-demand-accessible-webpage
Ofgem — Demand connections reform
https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/call-for-input/demand-connections-reform
Ofgem — Connect update: demand connections reform
https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/policy/connect-update-demand-connections-reform
Ofgem — Demand connections update
https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/guidance/demand-connections-update
National Energy System Operator — Gate 1 information
https://www.neso.energy/industry-information/connections-reform/gate-1-information
UK Parliament — Data-centre electricity connection applications in Scotland, written question 8368
https://questions-statements.parliament.uk/written-questions/detail/2026-06-09/8368/
Scottish Government — Energy Statistics for Scotland, Q1 2026
https://www.gov.scot/publications/energy-statistics-for-scotland-q1-2026/
Scottish Government — Renewable electricity pipeline, Q1 2026
https://www.gov.scot/publications/energy-statistics-for-scotland-q1-2026/pages/renewable-electricity-pipeline/
Scottish Government — Energy Statistics for Scotland, Q4 2025
https://www.gov.scot/publications/energy-statistics-for-scotland-q4-2025/
Scottish Parliament — Data Centres: Cumulative Impact Assessment, motion S7M-00419
https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/votes-and-motions/S7M-00419
Scottish Parliament — Data Centres: Cumulative Impact Assessment, Official Report, 24 June 2026
https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/official-report/search-what-was-said-in-parliament/meeting-of-parliament-24-06-2026?iob=225160&meeting=20183
Scottish Parliament — Written answers on AI data centres, planning and cumulative infrastructure demand
https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/questions-and-answers?msp=2394
UK Government — Lanarkshire named an AI Growth Zone
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/more-than-3400-jobs-and-targeted-support-for-local-communities-to-help-tackle-the-cost-of-living-as-lanarkshire-named-latest-ai-growth-zone
North Lanarkshire Council — Plans welcomed for Lanarkshire AI Growth Zone
https://www.northlanarkshire.gov.uk/news/plans-welcomed-north-lanarkshire-become-one-worlds-most-advanced-ai-sites
