Young urges caution; notes New York halting large AI data centres

Gail Alexan­der

For­mer prime min­is­ter and en­er­gy min­is­ter Stu­art Young has urged the Gov­ern­ment to pro­ceed cau­tious­ly with its pro­posed ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence da­ta cen­tre projects, point­ing to New York’s de­ci­sion to pause con­struc­tion of large fa­cil­i­ties over con­cerns about their im­pact on pow­er and wa­ter re­sources.

Mean­while, sev­er­al busi­ness op­er­a­tors, par­tic­u­lar­ly in south Trinidad, said town hall meet­ings should be held be­fore any projects pro­ceed. They said in­de­pen­dent ex­perts should ex­plain the po­ten­tial eco­nom­ic and en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pacts, while agen­cies such as the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty should al­so weigh in.

The calls came af­ter New York be­came the first US state to im­pose a one-year mora­to­ri­um on the con­struc­tion of new da­ta cen­tres with pow­er de­mands of 50 megawatts or more. Ac­cord­ing to Reuters, the mea­sure fol­lows con­cerns that the rapid ex­pan­sion of AI fa­cil­i­ties is in­creas­ing elec­tric­i­ty costs, strain­ing wa­ter sup­plies and plac­ing ad­di­tion­al pres­sure on lo­cal com­mu­ni­ties.

Last week, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced two mem­o­ran­dums of un­der­stand­ing to be­gin dis­cus­sions on large-scale AI in­fra­struc­ture. The pro­pos­als in­clude a 300-megawatt da­ta cen­tre and sup­port­ing in­fra­struc­ture, as well as a 150-megawatt AI in­fra­struc­ture and da­ta cen­tre fa­cil­i­ty with po­ten­tial ex­pan­sion to 500 megawatts.

Re­act­ing to the de­vel­op­ment, Young de­scribed New York’s de­ci­sion as “a time­ly warn­ing” for Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“This is a time­ly warn­ing for TT. Our elec­tric­i­ty grid and wa­ter pro­duc­tion can­not sup­port any large-scale (hy­per­scale) da­ta cen­tres. We al­so need to know what con­ces­sions are be­ing asked for,” he said.

He al­so point­ed to the coun­try’s sub­sidised elec­tric­i­ty sys­tem and T&TEC’s long­stand­ing debt to the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny.

“Our elec­tric­i­ty is high­ly sub­sidised and T&TEC has been un­able to pay NGC for the gas used to gen­er­ate the elec­tric­i­ty for years. Bil­lions of dol­lars are ow­ing.”

Young said the Gov­ern­ment must pro­vide greater trans­paren­cy on the pro­posed projects.

“There are many le­git­i­mate ques­tions and con­cerns that re­quire an­swers and de­tails to be pro­vid­ed by the Kam­la Per­sad Bisses­sar gov­ern­ment, in­clud­ing who is re­al­ly win­ning in this.”

The busi­ness op­er­a­tors al­so said res­i­dents should be ful­ly in­formed of any en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pacts be­fore projects move ahead.

They point­ed to re­ports from the Unit­ed States, in­clud­ing con­cerns in Geor­gia over land ac­qui­si­tion linked to pow­er­ing AI da­ta cen­tres, and said cit­i­zens should be al­lowed to ques­tion ex­perts about de­vel­op­ments that could af­fect their com­mu­ni­ties.