Govt says AI Data Centre concerns will be addressed as experts weigh risks

Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

The Gov­ern­ment is seek­ing to re­as­sure the pub­lic that en­vi­ron­men­tal, tech­ni­cal and reg­u­la­to­ry con­cerns sur­round­ing its pro­posed ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence da­ta cen­tre projects will be thor­ough­ly ex­am­ined be­fore any con­struc­tion be­gins.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia on Sun­day, Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence Do­minic Smith stressed that the agree­ments signed with Unit­ed States com­pa­nies are mem­o­ran­da of un­der­stand­ing (MOUs) and not ap­provals for de­vel­op­ment.

"It is im­por­tant to re­mem­ber that these are mem­o­ran­da of un­der­stand­ing es­tab­lish­ing a frame­work for col­lab­o­ra­tion and due dili­gence, not fi­nal project ap­provals," Smith said.

"Any project that ad­vances will un­der­go the nec­es­sary tech­ni­cal, en­vi­ron­men­tal and reg­u­la­to­ry as­sess­ments. This first fact is cru­cial."

His com­ments fol­low Fri­day's an­nounce­ment that Gov­ern­ment signed three MOUs with Amer­i­can or­gan­i­sa­tions, in­clud­ing two fo­cused on de­vel­op­ing ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence in­fra­struc­ture and large-scale da­ta cen­tres in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Un­der one agree­ment, Ernst & Young LLP in­tends to part­ner with third par­ties to de­vel­op a 300-megawatt da­ta cen­tre, while Hum­ming­bird AI Hold­ings LLC has pro­posed a 150-megawatt AI in­fra­struc­ture and da­ta cen­tre, with the po­ten­tial to ex­pand to 500 megawatts. Ini­tial com­mer­cial op­er­a­tions are tar­get­ed for the first quar­ter of 2028, sub­ject to the projects ad­vanc­ing be­yond the due dili­gence stage.

Gov­ern­ment has said the ini­tia­tives could at­tract bil­lions of US dol­lars in in­vest­ment and cre­ate thou­sands of skilled and se­mi-skilled jobs.

Stud­ies con­duct­ed on com­mu­ni­ties across the US where da­ta cen­tres have been es­tab­lished have found con­cerns re­gard­ing their im­pact on lo­cal util­i­ty bills, wa­ter scarci­ty and en­vi­ron­men­tal noise.

Fa­cil­i­ties re­quire mas­sive amounts of elec­tric­i­ty to run servers and wa­ter for cool­ing. This mas­sive de­mand can strain the lo­cal pow­er grid and in­crease com­pe­ti­tion for re­sources, po­ten­tial­ly rais­ing en­er­gy and wa­ter costs for near­by res­i­dents.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, con­tin­u­ous in­dus­tri­al cool­ing fans of­ten pro­duce a per­sis­tent, loud hum that de­grades neigh­bour­hood qual­i­ty of life.

While ac­knowl­edg­ing pub­lic con­cerns, Smith ar­gued that the broad­er sig­nif­i­cance lies in Trinidad and To­ba­go's grow­ing ap­peal as a des­ti­na­tion for dig­i­tal in­vest­ment.

"The re­al sto­ry is the op­por­tu­ni­ty," he said.

Smith said the in­ter­est from glob­al com­pa­nies re­flects Gov­ern­ment's ef­forts to po­si­tion Trinidad and To­ba­go as a re­gion­al leader in ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence and dig­i­tal pub­lic in­fra­struc­ture.

En­vi­ron­men­tal ex­pert urges ev­i­dence-based ap­proach

Deputy Dean of the Fac­ul­ty of Food and Agri­cul­ture at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine, Dr Ronald Roop­nar­ine, cau­tioned that many of the pub­lic con­cerns re­main hy­po­thet­i­cal be­cause the projects are still in their in­fan­cy.

He not­ed that an MOU sim­ply es­tab­lish­es a frame­work for dis­cus­sions and does not rep­re­sent a legal­ly bind­ing com­mit­ment to con­struct the fa­cil­i­ties.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia on Sun­day, Roop­nar­ine said the con­cept is tech­ni­cal­ly fea­si­ble but stressed that de­tailed fea­si­bil­i­ty stud­ies and en­vi­ron­men­tal as­sess­ments are es­sen­tial be­fore any con­clu­sions can be drawn about the project's im­pact.

While ac­knowl­edg­ing that da­ta cen­tres are en­er­gy-in­ten­sive and re­quire sig­nif­i­cant cool­ing, he sug­gest­ed there are prac­ti­cal ways to re­duce en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pacts.

Rather than re­ly­ing ex­clu­sive­ly on potable wa­ter, he said treat­ed waste­water from ex­ist­ing treat­ment plants could po­ten­tial­ly be re­pur­posed for cool­ing op­er­a­tions, lim­it­ing pres­sure on the coun­try's drink­ing wa­ter sup­ply.

Roop­nar­ine main­tained that Trinidad and To­ba­go's pri­ma­ry wa­ter chal­lenge is man­age­ment rather than avail­abil­i­ty.

"On pa­per, Trinidad is not a wa­ter-scarce coun­try," he ex­plained. "Our prin­ci­pal chal­lenge is re­al­ly wa­ter man­age­ment."

He iden­ti­fied elec­tric­i­ty de­mand as the more sig­nif­i­cant con­cern but said Trinidad and To­ba­go's ex­ist­ing in­dus­tri­al in­fra­struc­ture could pro­vide an ad­van­tage if the nec­es­sary fea­si­bil­i­ty stud­ies demon­strate the projects are vi­able.

Be­yond the en­vi­ron­men­tal con­sid­er­a­tions, Roop­nar­ine said the de­vel­op­ment could sup­port long-dis­cussed ef­forts to di­ver­si­fy the coun­try's econ­o­my be­yond tra­di­tion­al oil and gas in­dus­tries.

Con­sul­tant calls for cau­tious op­ti­mism

Da­ta pro­tec­tion and AI gov­er­nance con­sul­tant and Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of Priv­i­cy Ad­vi­so­ry Ser­vices, Rishi Ma­haraj, al­so urged cau­tious op­ti­mism.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia on Sun­day, he not­ed that Trinidad and To­ba­go al­ready op­er­ates sev­er­al da­ta cen­tres, in­clud­ing fa­cil­i­ties man­aged by Fu­jit­su, TSTT and Dig­i­cel, rais­ing ques­tions about how ex­ist­ing in­fra­struc­ture is cur­rent­ly be­ing utilised.

"I un­der­stand we need to go in this di­rec­tion," Ma­haraj said, "but we al­so need to un­der­stand whether our ex­ist­ing da­ta cen­tres are be­ing prop­er­ly utilised be­fore de­vel­op­ing ad­di­tion­al fa­cil­i­ties."

He de­scribed a 300-megawatt fa­cil­i­ty as a sub­stan­tial de­vel­op­ment re­quir­ing ex­ten­sive land, sig­nif­i­cant elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­a­tion and con­sid­er­able cool­ing ca­pac­i­ty.

"You're look­ing at a lot of acres of land to build that kind of da­ta cen­tre to pull that kind of wattage. So you're look­ing at a pret­ty large da­ta cen­tre that is go­ing to take up a lot of land space, ex­act­ly what land space we're go­ing to be us­ing, ob­vi­ous­ly,  there are ques­tion marks around that."

Ma­haraj be­lieves such fa­cil­i­ties could po­si­tion Trinidad and To­ba­go as a re­gion­al tech­nol­o­gy hub by strength­en­ing da­ta sov­er­eign­ty, al­low­ing Caribbean coun­tries to store sen­si­tive in­for­ma­tion clos­er to home rather than re­ly­ing ex­clu­sive­ly on over­seas cloud providers.

He said the projects could al­so cre­ate op­por­tu­ni­ties to ex­port dig­i­tal ser­vices and gen­er­ate for­eign ex­change.

How­ev­er, Ma­haraj warned that those op­por­tu­ni­ties must be ac­com­pa­nied by ro­bust safe­guards.

He called for com­pre­hen­sive en­vi­ron­men­tal con­sul­ta­tions, pub­lic en­gage­ment and leg­isla­tive re­forms cov­er­ing da­ta pro­tec­tion, cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty, ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence gov­er­nance and AI ethics be­fore any project pro­ceeds.

"The ben­e­fits are there," he said, "but we must al­so put the safe­guards in place so peo­ple can trust that their in­for­ma­tion will be pro­tect­ed."

En­vi­ron­men­tal­ist Kublals­ingh ques­tions eco­nom­ic vi­a­bil­i­ty

En­vi­ron­men­tal­ist Dr Wayne Kublals­ingh was far less con­vinced about the pro­pos­al, ar­gu­ing that the eco­nom­ic case for the de­vel­op­ments re­mains weak.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, he ques­tioned whether Trinidad and To­ba­go pos­sess­es suf­fi­cient nat­ur­al gas re­sources to sus­tain an­oth­er high­ly en­er­gy-in­ten­sive in­dus­try while ex­ist­ing man­u­fac­tur­ers con­tin­ue to face en­er­gy short­ages.

"I think it's a bad de­ci­sion in terms of eco­nom­ic cor­rect­ness," Kublals­ingh said.

"I don't think we have the gas for it."

He ar­gued Gov­ern­ment should in­stead fo­cus on de­vel­op­ing in­dige­nous re­new­able en­er­gy in­dus­tries, in­clud­ing bat­tery man­u­fac­tur­ing and so­lar tech­nol­o­gy, rather than sub­si­dis­ing for­eign-owned da­ta cen­tres with in­ex­pen­sive en­er­gy and wa­ter.

Kublals­ingh al­so ques­tioned the fi­nan­cial arrange­ments that would un­der­pin any agree­ment, say­ing he would want to know the prices at which gas and wa­ter would be sup­plied be­fore de­ter­min­ing whether the projects rep­re­sent val­ue for tax­pay­ers.

What is a Da­ta Cen­tre?

A da­ta cen­tre is a cen­tralised phys­i­cal fa­cil­i­ty that hous­es thou­sands of net­worked com­put­ers, servers, and da­ta stor­age sys­tems.

Ac­cord­ing to the In­ter­na­tion­al En­er­gy Agency, it acts as the back­bone of the in­ter­net, stor­ing and pro­cess­ing the dig­i­tal in­for­ma­tion re­quired for cloud com­put­ing, video stream­ing, and mod­ern dig­i­tal ap­pli­ca­tions. Da­ta cen­tres con­sume im­mense amounts of pow­er pri­mar­i­ly due to high-den­si­ty com­put­ing hard­ware (like AI-fo­cused GPUs) and the mas­sive cool­ing in­fra­struc­ture re­quired to pre­vent them from over­heat­ing.

High-den­si­ty com­put­er chips gen­er­ate in­tense heat. To main­tain op­ti­mal per­for­mance and pre­vent equip­ment fail­ure, fa­cil­i­ties re­quire mas­sive, con­tin­u­ous cool­ing sys­tems. Cool­ing can ac­count for up to half of a da­ta cen­tre's to­tal en­er­gy use.