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. But documents obtained through freedom of information requests and analysis of public records suggest the datacentre has no prospect of meeting that goal.
The Guardian obtained internal correspondence showing that the government and the site’s developers, even as they publicly promised that the Lanarkshire site would have up to 1GW of “new energy infrastructure”, were privately acknowledging that the site had an “issue” with “power provision” and that this would not happen. In response to questions, the government said the complex would connect to the grid, meaning it will either join a years-long queue or be expedited ahead of hundreds of other projects. A government spokesperson said the site’s needs would still be met “overwhelmingly” with renewables.
“Scottish AI datacentre misled on renewables pledge; Big Tech emissions soar as AI energy demand explodes.”
The revelations come as Big Tech’s net-zero climate goals slip out of reach because of massive investments in artificial intelligence. Google and Amazon released their yearly sustainability reports last week – both disclosed rising emissions because of new investments in power-hungry AI. Google’s total carbon emissions climbed 25% year-over-year, and Amazon’s shot up 16%. Microsoft, which will release its sustainability report in the coming weeks, appears likely to reveal a similar increase.
Google conceded that combating the energy and water-hungry needs of AI created a dilemma. “The environmental footprint of the data centers that power AI is growing, creating a dual challenge: managing that environmental footprint while simultaneously building infrastructure to meet growing demand and realize AI’s full potential,” reads Google’s report. Amazon said: “We recognize that the path to being a more sustainable company is not a straight line. Though our emissions increased in 2025, we remain steadfast in our commitment to sustainability.”
All three companies fashioned themselves climate leaders in the previous decade, when investors prioritized ESG. Each set ambitious net-zero carbon goals and heavily invested in sustainable energy projects like wind and solar. However, as these companies fight to win the AI arms race, their stock prices depend on their ability to integrate AI, which needs energy. Their desire for huge amounts of power has outstripped their commitments to sustainability, so their emissions promises have softened.
The findings raise critical doubts over the UK’s ability to confront the key question now facing the world’s massive AI buildout: how to provide the extraordinary energy required to make it plausible. AI datacentres are, essentially, buildings full of very specialised silicon chips. The question of whether AI is a boom or bubble now largely rests on huge infrastructure projects such as Lanarkshire.