Clock / UK data centres · updated 26 October 2026
In 2024, data centres in Scotland used 51 GWh (0.05 TWh) of electricity from the grid. That was 0.2% of all grid electricity consumed in the area src.
Gigawatt-hours of grid electricity used by data centres each year, and that use as a share of all grid electricity in Scotland. Source: DESNZ src.
| Year | Data centres | GWh | Share of area electricity |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | 12 | 57 | 0.3% |
| 2021 | 12 | 56 | 0.2% |
| 2022 | 12 | 56 | 0.3% |
| 2023 | 12 | 54 | 0.2% |
| 2024 | 12 | 51 | 0.2% |
Use went from 57 GWh in 2020 to 51 GWh in 2024, down 11%, while the share of local electricity moved from 0.3% to 0.2%. DESNZ counted 12 operational data centres here in 2020 and 12 in 2024 src. Across Great Britain, data centre use rose 41% over the same period.
Scotland used 1.1% of all data centre electricity in Great Britain in 2024 (51 of 4,460 GWh). Among the 8 areas DESNZ splits Great Britain into, it ranks 8th for total data centre electricity and 7th for the share of local electricity going to data centres src. For comparison, data centres used 1.8% of grid electricity across Great Britain as a whole.
51 GWh is about the yearly electricity of 20,300 typical UK homes, at Ofgem's 2,500 kWh a year for a medium home src. DESNZ's two figures also imply that all grid users in Scotland used about 21,657 GWh in 2024 (data centre use ÷ its share).
Derived: homes = data centre kWh ÷ 2,500 kWh, rounded to 3 significant figures. Implied area total = data centre GWh ÷ share. Share of GB = area GWh ÷ GB data centre GWh.
OpenStreetMap and Wikidata have 16 data centre sites mapped inside Scotland's boundary src src, 15 of them with a name: Asanti Hamilton, Brightsolid, Cultybraggan nuclear bunker, DataVita DV1, DataVita DV2, EPCC, Edinburgh SC-2, Edinburgh SC-3, Lloyds Banking Group, Pulsant Edinburgh SC-1, RBS Data Centre, RBS Melville Gate Data Centre, Sungard Availability Services, Verizon Glasgow GLSGGB, iomart Glasgow Data Centre.
Sites with a recorded opening year: Cultybraggan nuclear bunker (1990).
Sites placed by point-in-polygon against ONS local authority boundaries src. Community-mapped sites aren't the same list as DESNZ's count (which only includes colocation and hyperscale data centres with matched meters), so the two numbers differ. OpenStreetMap snapshot: 21 September 2026. Missing one? Add it to OpenStreetMap. See them on the map.
DESNZ's figures cover colocation, managed hosting and hyperscale data centres whose electricity meters could be matched; they exclude enterprise (in-house) data centres and on-site generation, so they're a floor, not a total. Some areas are grouped by DESNZ for disclosure reasons. Download this page's data: local.json.