Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

The Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate could emerge as the pre­ferred lo­ca­tion for at least one of the US-backed da­ta cen­tre projects pro­posed for Trinidad and To­ba­go, with con­struc­tion po­ten­tial­ly be­gin­ning with­in months once ne­go­ti­a­tions are com­plet­ed.

US Em­bassy Eco­nom­ic Of­fi­cer Jeff Cern­yar said in­dus­tri­al es­tates such as Point Lisas pro­vide the ide­al en­vi­ron­ment for large-scale da­ta cen­tres be­cause they al­ready ac­com­mo­date heavy in­dus­try and are lo­cat­ed away from res­i­den­tial com­mu­ni­ties, ad­dress­ing one of the main pub­lic con­cerns sur­round­ing the de­vel­op­ments.

A con­sor­tium led by Hum­ming­bird AI has signed a mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing (MoU) with the Gov­ern­ment to de­vel­op a 150-megawatt da­ta cen­tre, while a sep­a­rate con­sor­tium led by EY is propos­ing a 300-megawatt fa­cil­i­ty. The projects were among three ma­jor in­vest­ment ini­tia­tives an­nounced by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar last week, along­side plans to restart the Iron and Steel Com­pa­ny of T&T (IS­COTT).

While de­clin­ing to iden­ti­fy a fi­nal lo­ca­tion, Cern­yar sug­gest­ed Point Lisas was a log­i­cal choice.

“I think, as the Prime Min­is­ter was an­nounc­ing some weeks ago, the ex­pan­sion of the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate, as she was men­tion­ing oth­er in­dus­tri­al es­tates that are go­ing to be open for busi­ness, you want to think about maybe putting it there, where there’s al­ready in­dus­try, where there’s al­ready a lev­el of noise, and not putting it in a res­i­den­tial area,” he said.

There have al­so been re­ports that Debe is un­der con­sid­er­a­tion for one of the pro­posed da­ta cen­tres.

Cern­yar said ne­go­ti­a­tions are con­tin­u­ing be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and the pri­vate-sec­tor part­ners over util­i­ties, land al­lo­ca­tion and con­struc­tion arrange­ments be­fore fi­nal agree­ments can be signed.

“I would ex­pect in a cou­ple of months that these things should be very well ironed out,” he said. “They could start with ac­tu­al plan­ning for con­struc­tion.”

Once agree­ments are fi­nalised, Cern­yar be­lieves T&T could de­liv­er the projects sig­nif­i­cant­ly faster than many com­pet­ing coun­tries be­cause of its ex­ist­ing elec­tric­i­ty in­fra­struc­ture.

“Nor­mal­ly, if you talk about build­ing a da­ta cen­tre some­where, it’s a four-year project. But two of those years are meant to bring your elec­tri­cal grid up to the ca­pac­i­ty it needs to sup­ply the elec­tric­i­ty,” he ex­plained.

He said T&T’s elec­tric­i­ty sys­tem al­ready has sub­stan­tial un­used gen­er­at­ing ca­pac­i­ty.

“This is the first time I’ve served in a coun­try where there is ex­cess ca­pac­i­ty in gen­er­at­ing and trans­mis­sion on the grid. T&T has about a quar­ter of its gen­er­at­ing ca­pac­i­ty that is not used.”

That ad­van­tage, he said, could re­duce con­struc­tion time­lines to be­tween 18 and 24 months af­ter con­tracts are signed.

Pub­lic con­cern has cen­tred on the po­ten­tial en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact of the fa­cil­i­ties, par­tic­u­lar­ly their wa­ter con­sump­tion and the con­tin­u­ous noise gen­er­at­ed by cool­ing equip­ment.

Cern­yar ac­knowl­edged those con­cerns were le­git­i­mate but said the com­pa­nies would be ex­pect­ed to com­ply with lo­cal laws and en­vi­ron­men­tal reg­u­la­tions.

“We’re glad peo­ple are rais­ing them be­cause what we ex­pect when an Amer­i­can com­pa­ny comes to T&T is that they are go­ing to be trans­par­ent. They are go­ing to be open. They are go­ing to work with the com­mu­ni­ties, work with the Gov­ern­ment, fol­low reg­u­la­tions, fol­low rules, fol­low laws and be good cor­po­rate cit­i­zens.”

He not­ed that lo­cat­ing the fa­cil­i­ties with­in es­tab­lished in­dus­tri­al es­tates would min­imise noise im­pacts on sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties.

On wa­ter use, Cern­yar said mod­ern cool­ing tech­nolo­gies could sub­stan­tial­ly re­duce con­sump­tion.

He said sev­er­al sys­tems now op­er­ate on closed-loop de­signs that re­cy­cle wa­ter in­stead of con­tin­u­al­ly draw­ing fresh sup­plies, while some tech­nolo­gies can use sea­wa­ter for heat ex­change.

“I don’t know what tech­nol­o­gy the com­pa­nies are go­ing to use, but there are meth­ods of ad­dress­ing that,” he said, adding that T&T al­so has ex­per­tise in de­sali­na­tion should ad­di­tion­al wa­ter sup­plies be­come nec­es­sary.

Be­yond con­struc­tion, Cern­yar said the projects could cre­ate em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties across a range of skilled pro­fes­sions while help­ing di­ver­si­fy the coun­try’s econ­o­my be­yond oil and gas.

He said hun­dreds of tem­po­rary jobs would be cre­at­ed dur­ing the con­struc­tion phase, fol­lowed by per­ma­nent po­si­tions for tech­ni­cians, en­gi­neers, man­agers and oth­er spe­cial­ists to op­er­ate the fa­cil­i­ties.

“This is very well aligned with many of the things that T&T is al­ready good at,” he said. “You look at the uni­ver­si­ties, you look at the schools here and the qual­i­ty of the stu­dents that are put out every year. This is a great op­por­tu­ni­ty for those folks to be work­ing in cut­ting-edge fields right here in T&T.”

Cern­yar de­scribed the pro­posed da­ta cen­tres as part of a broad­er tran­si­tion to a knowl­edge-based econ­o­my.

“You’re ba­si­cal­ly con­vert­ing methane, nat­ur­al gas, in­to knowl­edge, in­to in­for­ma­tion. This is a defin­ing mo­ment. It’s a new in­dus­tri­al rev­o­lu­tion, a knowl­edge rev­o­lu­tion, and T&T can be in the dri­ver’s seat as part of that, in part­ner­ship with the Unit­ed States.”