WELL DONE! As Edinburgh councillors have unanimously rejected plans for a huge new AI data centre.

Not one councillor on the committee, from any party, voted in favour. In voting to reject it, they cited the project's failure to address the climate emergency or show how its greenhouse gas emissions could be minimised.

This is an important development. The proposed data centre at the former Royal Bank of Scotland headquarters in South Gyle would have used 213 megawatts of power - roughly equivalent to every home in Glasgow and Edinburgh combined. Its estimated annual carbon footprint of over 200,000 tonnes of CO2 is comparable to the total emissions from Edinburgh Airport.

Foxglove helped kick this off. Last October, our research, reported in the i newspaper, first revealed the staggering scale of the data centre's carbon emissions. That 200,000 tonnes figure - and our Edinburgh Airport comparison - were picked up across the Scottish media and became central to the public debate. One councillor in the hearing highlighted that the proposal was equivalent to "more than three times the total emissions of the council's operations."