Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Op­po­si­tion Chief Whip Mar­vin Gon­za­les says the for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) gov­ern­ment re­ject­ed a pro­pos­al for an ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence (AI) da­ta cen­tre be­cause the com­pa­ny be­hind it was in­ter­est­ed on­ly in ben­e­fit­ing from Trinidad and To­ba­go’s sub­sidised wa­ter and elec­tric­i­ty rates.

Gon­za­les spoke with Guardian Me­dia as de­bate con­tin­ued over the Gov­ern­ment’s con­sid­er­a­tion of US pro­pos­als for da­ta cen­tres, in­clud­ing AI in­fra­struc­ture and a da­ta cen­tre fa­cil­i­ty.

Gon­za­les said the com­pa­ny, which he de­clined to iden­ti­fy, had ap­proached the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion with the pro­pos­al.

“They came to us with these ini­tia­tives for an AI da­ta cen­tre, but want­ed to make use of the sub­si­dies for wa­ter and elec­tric­i­ty. We told them ‘no’ be­cause they on­ly want­ed to ben­e­fit from the sub­si­dies.”

Re­fer­ring to a re­cent Guardian Me­dia re­port that the PNM gov­ern­ment be­gan a Tier 4 da­ta cen­tre project in 2022 and in­vit­ed ten­ders for a fa­cil­i­ty at the Phoenix Park In­dus­tri­al Es­tate, Gon­za­les said con­ven­tion­al da­ta cen­tres dif­fer from AI da­ta cen­tres.

He said the com­pa­ny that ap­proached the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion did not pro­pose a lo­ca­tion.

“They just want­ed to test our ap­petite for AI da­ta cen­tres.”

Mean­while, Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence Do­minic Smith said To­ba­go could be con­sid­ered as a lo­ca­tion if dis­cus­sions on da­ta cen­tres progress in that di­rec­tion.

Smith was re­spond­ing to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia on whether a da­ta cen­tre could be lo­cat­ed in To­ba­go, giv­en its avail­able land, pow­er sup­ply, an­tic­i­pat­ed im­prove­ments to its wa­ter sup­ply and in­ter­est in busi­ness ex­pan­sion.

The Gov­ern­ment re­cent­ly iden­ti­fied po­ten­tial sites at Pic­ton Es­tate near Debe, the for­mer Usine Ste Madeleine sug­ar fac­to­ry, Brechin Cas­tle, Point Lisas, and a site near the Beetham Wa­ter Treat­ment Plant.

Smith said dis­cus­sions on da­ta cen­tres were pro­gress­ing but re­mained at a pre­lim­i­nary stage.

“If, as those dis­cus­sions evolve, there’s an op­por­tu­ni­ty in­volv­ing our sis­ter isle, that would cer­tain­ly be some­thing for con­sid­er­a­tion. How­ev­er, we haven’t yet reached that stage of the process, so it would be pre­ma­ture for me to com­ment fur­ther at this time,” he said.

Smith al­so ad­dressed con­cerns raised in the Unit­ed States about noise gen­er­at­ed by da­ta cen­tres, par­tic­u­lar­ly the con­stant hum pro­duced by cool­ing equip­ment. Re­ports have sug­gest­ed the low-fre­quen­cy sound can be heard up to a mile away and may af­fect near­by res­i­dents.

A re­cent New York Times ar­ti­cle, The Cloud Has Sound: The Un­re­lent­ing and Un­seen Cost of AI Da­ta Cen­tres, de­tailed com­plaints from Amer­i­cans liv­ing near such fa­cil­i­ties, with some claim­ing “the con­stant low-fre­quen­cy vi­bra­tion is ru­in­ing their health and homes.”

Smith said such is­sues would be ad­dressed dur­ing the plan­ning and ap­proval process.

“These is­sues will be ad­dressed as part of any for­mal plan­ning and ap­provals as the projects ma­ture.”

He said mod­ern da­ta cen­tres dif­fer sig­nif­i­cant­ly from ear­li­er gen­er­a­tions.

“There have been many it­er­a­tions of da­ta cen­tres as tech­nol­o­gy has evolved in the last five to 10 years. Mod­ern da­ta cen­tres are sig­nif­i­cant­ly dif­fer­ent from ear­li­er gen­er­a­tions. Noise from cool­ing sys­tems can be ef­fec­tive­ly mit­i­gat­ed through care­ful site se­lec­tion, acoustic bar­ri­ers, en­closed cool­ing tech­nolo­gies, build­ing de­sign and set­back re­quire­ments to en­sure they com­ply with ap­plic­a­ble en­vi­ron­men­tal stan­dards. These are all con­sid­er­a­tions that would form part of any de­tailed project as­sess­ment.”

Smith said the Gov­ern­ment’s ob­jec­tive was to at­tract in­vest­ment con­sis­tent with mod­ern sus­tain­abil­i­ty prac­tices.

He added: “At this stage, dis­cus­sions re­main pre­lim­i­nary. Gov­ern­ment’s fo­cus is on ex­plor­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties that can gen­er­ate high-val­ue jobs, di­ver­si­fy the econ­o­my and at­tract in­vest­ment while en­sur­ing that en­vi­ron­men­tal, in­fra­struc­ture and com­mu­ni­ty im­pacts are prop­er­ly as­sessed and re­spon­si­bly man­aged.”