As dis­cus­sions swirled fol­low­ing the an­nounce­ment by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar that the gov­ern­ment had signed Mem­o­ran­dums of Un­der­stand­ing (MoUs) with the aim of es­tab­lish­ing da­ta cen­tres in T&T, man­age­ment sci­en­tist Dr Kevin Fleary opt­ed to share his point of view via an ar­ti­cle sent to the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian.

Dr Fleary is a mem­ber of the UWI Arthur Lok Jack Glob­al School of Busi­ness fac­ul­ty and the man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of the Ac­ces­si­ble In­sights Caribbean In­no­va­tion Foun­da­tion (AICI Foun­da­tion). His work fo­cus­es on dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion, busi­ness sim­u­la­tion and in­no­va­tion-dri­ven eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment across the Caribbean.

The MOUs stat­ed a con­sor­tium led by Hum­ming­bird AI was tasked with the de­vel­op­ment a 150-megawatt da­ta cen­tre, while a sep­a­rate con­sor­tium led by Ernst & Young is propos­ing a 300-megawatt fa­cil­i­ty.

Dr Fleary, in the ar­ti­cle, made an as­sess­ment of the po­ten­tial of da­ta cen­tres in T&T as he said they rep­re­sent more than dig­i­tal in­fra­struc­ture, but cat­a­lysts for in­dus­tri­al growth.

He ex­plained, “Be­yond sup­port­ing the dig­i­tal econ­o­my, da­ta cen­tres can stim­u­late lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ing, en­gi­neer­ing, re­new­able en­er­gy, con­struc­tion, lo­gis­tics, and high-val­ue tech­nol­o­gy ser­vices, cre­at­ing skilled jobs and strength­en­ing the Caribbean’s ca­pac­i­ty to com­pete in the glob­al dig­i­tal econ­o­my.”

Like for­mer En­er­gy Cham­ber CEO Dr Thack­wray “Dax” Dri­ver in his as­sess­ment of the top­ic a week ear­li­er, Fleary made ref­er­ence to strug­gles with­in the coun­try’s main eco­nom­ic dri­ver: the en­er­gy sec­tor.

Dr Fleary said, “Trinidad and To­ba­go must con­front a dif­fi­cult eco­nom­ic re­al­i­ty: some of the in­dus­tries that built the coun­try’s pros­per­i­ty are con­tract­ing. The clo­sure of the Petrotrin re­fin­ery, the per­ma­nent shut­down of At­lantic LNG’s Train 1, the con­tin­ued idling of the At­las methanol plant and Methanex’s June 2026 de­ci­sion to in­def­i­nite­ly idle its Ti­tan plant demon­strate the con­se­quences of de­clin­ing nat­ur­al-gas avail­abil­i­ty, ag­ing fa­cil­i­ties and chang­ing glob­al mar­kets. Methanex specif­i­cal­ly stat­ed that it could not se­cure a new gas con­tract for Ti­tan be­yond 2026.”

How­ev­er, while Dri­ver raised an alarm that dwin­dling gas sup­ply could hin­der the nec­es­sary pow­er gen­er­a­tion for such projects, Dr Fleary stressed that de­vel­op­ment of an in­dus­try based around AI da­ta cen­tres should be guid­ed by pol­i­cy.

He said, “We should con­tin­ue sup­port­ing vi­able en­er­gy and man­u­fac­tur­ing op­er­a­tions, but pre­serv­ing ex­ist­ing in­dus­tries alone will not cre­ate the next gen­er­a­tion of em­ploy­ment, ex­ports and for­eign in­vest­ment.

T&T must de­lib­er­ate­ly at­tract new in­dus­tries that can use our ex­ist­ing strengths in en­er­gy, en­gi­neer­ing, telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions, fi­nance and in­dus­tri­al man­age­ment. AI da­ta cen­tres rep­re­sent one such op­por­tu­ni­ty, but their de­vel­op­ment must be ap­proached as na­tion­al in­dus­tri­al pol­i­cy—not sim­ply as the con­struc­tion of large build­ings filled with for­eign-owned com­put­ers. “

Dr Dri­ver how­ev­er, did state in his as­sess­ment that T&T should not sec­ond-guess its ca­pa­bil­i­ty to sup­port such an in­dus­try, par­tic­u­lar­ly from a hu­man re­source stand­point, as the coun­try had de­vel­oped sev­er­al world-class in­dus­tri­al plants for decades.

Dr Fleary agreed, as he stat­ed, “The coun­try al­ready pos­sess­es much of the hu­man ca­pa­bil­i­ty need­ed to man­age this new sec­tor. For decades, Trinidad and To­ba­go’s en­gi­neers, tech­ni­cians, project man­agers, safe­ty pro­fes­sion­als, in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy spe­cial­ists and reg­u­la­tors have op­er­at­ed oil­fields, pow­er sta­tions, petro­chem­i­cal plants, telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions net­works and one of the Caribbean’s most de­vel­oped in­dus­tri­al es­tates.”

He con­tin­ued, “Da­ta cen­tres re­quire many of the same dis­ci­plines: re­li­able elec­tric­i­ty, cool­ing, fire pro­tec­tion, cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty, phys­i­cal se­cu­ri­ty, en­vi­ron­men­tal mon­i­tor­ing, equip­ment main­te­nance and busi­ness-con­ti­nu­ity plan­ning. This does not mean that every pro­pos­al should be ac­cept­ed or that our in­dus­tri­al record is per­fect. It means that the risks are not be­yond our abil­i­ty to un­der­stand and man­age.”

Dr Fleary said a na­tion­al train­ing and lo­cal-par­tic­i­pa­tion pro­gramme could pre­pare elec­tri­cians, cool­ing tech­ni­cians, net­work en­gi­neers, cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty pro­fes­sion­als and fa­cil­i­ties man­agers for per­ma­nent roles, while uni­ver­si­ties and tech­ni­cal in­sti­tu­tions could de­vel­op spe­cialised pro­grammes in da­ta-cen­tre en­gi­neer­ing, cloud com­put­ing, ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence and en­er­gy man­age­ment.

Much of the de­bate since the wake of the an­nounce­ment of the MoUs, has been about the wa­ter sup­ply usu­al­ly re­quired to sus­tain da­ta cen­tres. AI da­ta cen­tres reg­u­lar­ly re­quire wa­ter to cool high-per­for­mance serv­er racks and man­age heat. As a re­sult it has drawn in­tense glob­al scruti­ny due to its im­pact on lo­cal drink­ing sup­plies.

Dr Fleary ac­knowl­edged this ar­gu­ment, not­ing that there were al­ready con­cerns about the re­li­a­bil­i­ty of the wa­ter sup­ply around the coun­try.

He said, “The goal must be to build a lo­cal in­dus­try around the in­vest­ment rather than mere­ly pro­vide land and util­i­ties to an over­seas op­er­a­tor. Wa­ter use is one of the pub­lic’s great­est con­cerns, par­tic­u­lar­ly when many com­mu­ni­ties al­ready ex­pe­ri­ence an un­re­li­able sup­ply. How­ev­er, high wa­ter con­sump­tion is not un­avoid­able; it de­pends on the cool­ing tech­nol­o­gy and the source of the wa­ter. Google’s da­ta cen­tre in Ham­i­na, Fin­land, us­es sea­wa­ter from the Gulf of Fin­land as part of its cool­ing sys­tem, re­duc­ing its de­pen­dence on con­ven­tion­al me­chan­i­cal cool­ing.”

He gave ad­di­tion­al ex­am­ples that T&T could fol­low, as he point­ed out Ama­zon Web Ser­vices (AWS) has in­tro­duced re­cy­cled-wa­ter cool­ing in lo­ca­tions in­clud­ing Hong Kong, and it re­port­ed that 24 of its da­ta cen­tres were us­ing re­cy­cled wa­ter by 2023.

Dr Fleary said, “These ex­am­ples show how the con­cern can be man­aged: Trinidad and To­ba­go could re­quire a de­vel­op­er to use sea­wa­ter, de­sali­nat­ed wa­ter, treat­ed waste­water or a closed-loop cool­ing sys­tem rather than com­pet­ing with house­holds for potable wa­ter. Be­fore con­struc­tion be­gins, the op­er­a­tor should dis­close its max­i­mum dai­ly wa­ter de­mand, the pro­posed source, its drought man­age­ment plan and how waste­water will be treat­ed. Wa­ter con­sump­tion should then be in­de­pen­dent­ly mea­sured and pub­lished through­out the life of the fa­cil­i­ty. “

Oth­er con­cerns, such as elec­tric­i­ty de­mand, noise, waste and en­vi­ron­men­tal ef­fects, Dr Fleary ar­gued could be man­aged in a sim­i­lar prac­ti­cal man­ner.

He said, “A large fa­cil­i­ty should not be per­mit­ted to place an un­planned bur­den on the na­tion­al grid or cause elec­tric­i­ty costs to rise for cit­i­zens and ex­ist­ing busi­ness­es. The in­vestor could be re­quired to fi­nance ded­i­cat­ed gen­er­a­tion, trans­mis­sion up­grades, re­new­able-en­er­gy ca­pac­i­ty or oth­er im­prove­ments need­ed to serve the project. Mod­ern cool­ing and liq­uid-cool­ing sys­tems can al­so re­duce the elec­tric­i­ty re­quired for tem­per­a­ture con­trol.”

Dr Fleary again point­ed to Ama­zon as an ex­am­ple that could be fol­lowed.

“AWS, for ex­am­ple, says its new­er de­sign can re­duce me­chan­i­cal cool­ing-en­er­gy con­sump­tion by up to 50 per cent un­der peak con­di­tions com­pared with its pre­vi­ous de­sign.

“Waste heat can be­come a use­ful re­source rather than sim­ply be­ing re­leased in­to the en­vi­ron­ment. Mi­crosoft and en­er­gy com­pa­ny For­tum are de­vel­op­ing a sys­tem in Fin­land that will cap­ture heat from Mi­crosoft da­ta cen­tres and sup­ply dis­trict heat­ing to sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties,” he said, “T&T does not have the same need for home heat­ing, but re­cov­ered heat could po­ten­tial­ly sup­port in­dus­tri­al dry­ing, food pro­cess­ing, aqua­cul­ture or oth­er care­ful­ly as­sessed com­mer­cial us­es. Noise from gen­er­a­tors and cool­ing equip­ment can be re­duced through site se­lec­tion, acoustic en­clo­sures and op­er­at­ing lim­its, while bat­ter­ies and elec­tron­ic equip­ment should be cov­ered by en­force­able re­cy­cling and dis­pos­al plans.”

To con­clude, Dr Fleary again stressed that pol­i­cy was im­por­tant to in­form what­ev­er ap­proach T&T would take in adapt­ing AI da­ta cen­tres lo­cal­ly.

“Ul­ti­mate­ly, the suc­cess of AI da­ta-cen­tre de­vel­op­ment will de­pend less on pro­mo­tion­al promis­es and more on man­age­ment and gov­er­nance. Sin­ga­pore, an­oth­er small coun­try with lim­it­ed land and re­sources, in­tro­duced a Green Da­ta Cen­tre Roadmap to al­low con­tin­ued growth while plac­ing greater em­pha­sis on en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy and clean­er en­er­gy. T&T needs its own trans­par­ent frame­work be­fore grant­i­ng ma­jor con­ces­sions or ap­provals,” Dr Fleary said.

“De­vel­op­ers should be re­quired to dis­close elec­tric­i­ty and wa­ter re­quire­ments, in­fra­struc­ture costs, en­vi­ron­men­tal ef­fects, per­ma­nent em­ploy­ment pro­jec­tions, lo­cal pro­cure­ment com­mit­ments and pro­posed tax ben­e­fits.

“Agree­ments should in­clude mea­sur­able tar­gets, in­de­pen­dent mon­i­tor­ing, an­nu­al pub­lic re­port­ing and penal­ties or claw­backs when com­mit­ments are not met. Prop­er­ly gov­erned, da­ta cen­tres could at­tract for­eign in­vest­ment, cre­ate tech­ni­cal ca­reers, strength­en na­tion­al util­i­ties, sup­port ex­ist­ing in­dus­tries and po­si­tion T&T to ex­port dig­i­tal ser­vices.”

He closed, “Poor­ly gov­erned, they could con­sume sub­sidised re­sources while cre­at­ing lim­it­ed last­ing val­ue. Our na­tion­al dis­cus­sion should there­fore move be­yond whether we are sim­ply “for” or “against” da­ta cen­tres. The re­al ques­tion is whether we have the vi­sion and dis­ci­pline to man­age this op­por­tu­ni­ty so that the peo­ple of T&T re­main its prin­ci­pal ben­e­fi­cia­ries.”