Former Energy Chamber chief executive officer Dr Dax Driver has raised questions as to whether T&T has the energy generation capacity to supply the proposed data centres.
Last week, Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar announced that a consortium led by Hummingbird AI had signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Government to develop a 150-megawatt data centre, while a separate consortium led by Ernst & Young is proposing a 300-megawatt facility.
When contacted for a comment on the development yesterday, Dr Driver pointed to an article on data centres in T&T he authored which was published on the Caribbean Energy website entitled ‘Gas to gigabytes: at what price?’
In the article, Driver acknowledged the online debate about the development and while he pushed back against what he described as a defeatist attitude in some of the arguments, given T&T’s ability to build industry, particular in energy, he did have some concerns about the proposed data centres.
He said, “There is a fundamental issue that does deeply concern me about the proposed data centres which I do not think is going to be easily overcome. In Trinidad, any discussion about electricity needs to always be taken back one step further and placed in the context of the gas industry.”
Driver pointed out the recent natural gas supply issues at Point Lisas as major red flag with regard to that development.
“Trinidad has long used competitively priced electricity as a draw for foreign investment. It features prominently on investment promotion websites and in presentations. The Global-T&T website has this to say: The availability and abundant supply of affordable electricity and natural gas gives the sector a competitive advantage,” wrote Dr Driver.
“Given that we have just seen the shutdown of a world-scale ammonia complex, operated by Nutrien, and the second of the two methanol plants operated by Methanex, because of an inability to negotiate gas supply contracts at affordable prices, this statement needs to be challenged. We do not have an abundant supply, unless we deliberately close down more of the industries currently using natural gas.”
This, according to Driver, raised concern about whether T&T does actually have the capacity to provide an electricity supply to these data centres.
“Given the huge discount at which gas is sold to T&TEC and the ready availability of much higher paying customers crying out for supply (such as Methanex and Nutrien), Trinidad & Tobago needs to stop advertising itself as a location with cheap and abundant electricity. This might have been the case decades ago when we were trying to develop markets for our gas, but it is certainly no longer the case today (and in fact has not been the case for more than a decade),” said Dr Driver, “A 300 MW and 150 MW data centre are going to collectively utilise more than ten thousand megawatt-hours of electricity every day. This would represent an additional 40 to 45 per cent increase above current electricity consumption, so new generation capacity will certainly be required.”
He estimated that based on information in the National Gas Company’s 2024 annual report, the rate that T&T Electricity Commission is being invoiced by NGC for the natural gas that is transformed into electricity is US$1.90 per mmbtu. He also estimated that light manufacturers in T&T are now paying US$5.30 per mmbtu and petrochemical operators are paying above US$6 per mmbtu.
He pointed that while there are data centres that do use solar or wind energy, the vast majority use natural gas, if not directly but as a backup supply of power due to the 24/7 demand of such plants.
