Plans filed for 1GW data center campus at former Scottish nuclear plant

CX Tech has filed plans for a £16.5 billion ($21.77 billion) data center campus delivering up to 1GW of capacity at Chapelcross, a former nuclear power station site near Annan in South Scotland. The application, submitted to Dumfries & Galloway Council, seeks permission for eight buildings totaling 162,000 sqm and an on-site substation, with construction potentially running from 2027 to 2035.

The 55-hectare brownfield site was previously home to RAF Annan during WWII and later the Chapelcross nuclear power station, which operated from 1959 until decommissioning in 2004. CX Tech Limited has been appointed strategic development partner by NDA Properties Limited, a subsidiary of the UK's Nuclear Decommissioning Authority.

The project's energy and sustainability commitments

CX Tech said the campus will run exclusively on renewable energy, with the company exploring direct and private-wire connections to wind, solar, and biomass generation. The site benefits from an adjacent 132kV Grid Supply Point and is surrounded by what the company describes as substantial existing and potential renewable energy capacity.

The design specifies closed-loop, non-evaporative air cooling to reduce water consumption and green fuel rather than conventional diesel for backup generation. CX Tech is also investigating options for waste heat reuse from the facility.

Strategic positioning for AI and cloud workloads

Graeme Anderson, chief executive of CX Tech Limited, said: "Global demand for AI and high-performance computing is accelerating rapidly, but delivering the next generation of digital infrastructure is about much more than simply building additional data center capacity. The challenge is bringing together scale, power, sustainability, resilience and the ability to grow over the long term."

Anderson stressed the project is not being designed around a single operator or a single point in the market cycle. "Our ambition is to create an infrastructure platform capable of evolving with the requirements of AI, cloud and high-performance computing, giving major operators the opportunity to deploy and expand at significant scale," he said.

Political and community pushback

The proposal faces opposition from the Scottish Greens. South Scotland MSP Laura Moodie called for the bid to be rejected, telling the Holyrood: "The proposal which has been lodged is reckless and endangers our energy supply and natural environment." A local Facebook group opposing the project, Say No to Chapelcross AI Data Centre, has attracted just under 700 members.

The Scottish Parliament recently backed a temporary moratorium on hyperscale data centers, vowing not to approve new schemes until updated planning guidelines are finalized. The move followed a motion put forward by the Greens, reflecting growing tension between data center development ambitions and local concerns across more than a dozen proposed projects in Scotland.

Why this matters for executives and strategy leads

The Chapelcross proposal signals that data center developers are increasingly targeting decommissioned energy sites with existing grid infrastructure to bypass the interconnection bottlenecks slowing projects elsewhere. For real estate and construction leaders, the eight-year phased build-out and 1GW ultimate capacity represent a long-horizon development model tied directly to renewable power procurement. Finance and government stakeholders should watch whether Scotland's temporary moratorium reshapes the timeline for projects already in the planning pipeline - and whether the outcome sets a precedent for other markets where data center growth is colliding with local opposition.