McBains Cooper says data centres should be relocated to Scotland

Derek Webster, associate director at McBains Cooper, said that London was the wrong climate for data centres, which typically generate masses of waste heat. He instead suggested that data centres would be better built in cooler, and cheaper, parts of the UK.

“London is too warm,” said Webster. “Economics, environment, land prices and power supply all point towards the value of building data centres in cooler parts of Wales, the North of England and Scotland. But the server huggers won’t have it, because of the equipment proximity and fibres not being fast enough for traders to fire data to and fro between businesses and server to maximize commercial advantage.”

Webster went on to suggest that data centres should have access to ‘red electricity’, low duty electricity much like the red diesel used in certain areas of the transport sector.

Webster said: “The government needs to create ‘red electricity’ specifically for data centres, because up to 60% of the cost of running a data centre is power – and on a square meter for square meter basis, data centres burn up to 30 times as much power as offices.”