A British investment management company is planning a modular data center campus in East Ayrshire, just south of Glasgow, part-powered by wind energy.

Intelligent Land Investment (ILI) has submitted an application with the local council to build the Blair Farm data center on a 10,000 square meter piece of land.

The company says cool climate and strong winds make East Ayrshire a perfect location for such a facility: it will derive more than 40 percent of the energy it needs from six-turbine wind farm located on site.

“The Blair Farm Data Centre will be a landmark development for East Ayrshire – a data center drawing a substantial amount of its energy from a green source,” said Mark Wilson, managing director of ILI.

The Blair Farm project

ILI originally specialized in residential property, but following the crash of 2008 it shifted its focus to renewable energy and related projects – including data centers.

The Blair Farm data center will consist of four units with curved ‘green’ roofs designed in partnership with local energy specialist Green Cat Renewables.

ILI plans to invest up to £5 million in initial work on the site, which will host 2,000 racks once complete, and create around 20 jobs.

The company says the village of Fenwick, where the facility is to be located, is on average two degrees cooler than other major European data center locations, which means less energy is spent on cooling.

“Scotland is also very renewable energy-friendly, and well on track to achieve the government target of 100 per cent of electricity supply from renewable sources by 2020,” added Wilson.

According to Scotland Herald, ILI hopes to have a planning permission by the end of summer, and the site will be ready for builders in 2016.

In line with ILI’s business model, the company will not run the data center itself – instead, it will sell the land for further development once it obtains a planning permission.