In my view, the present gov­ern­ment of T&T is us­ing the da­ta cen­tre push to di­ver­si­fy our econ­o­my from de­pen­dence on oil and gas and down­stream oil and gas prod­ucts like methanol, to a more mod­ern in­dus­tri­alised econ­o­my.

Da­ta cen­tres will con­sume large amounts of en­er­gy, but any econ­o­mist will tell you en­er­gy con­sump­tion cor­re­lates with GDP growth. Like­ly, nat­ur­al gas will be a ma­jor en­er­gy in­put in this process, but in the long term, there is hope to piv­ot to re­new­ables. How­ev­er, giv­en the forex short­age in T&T, it would be im­pos­si­ble for the gov­ern­ment to in­vest in re­new­ables at a large scale with­out mas­sive in­flows of forex, which the da­ta cen­tre will help pro­vide.

A 2016 en­gi­neer­ing re­search pa­per by K Hall and G Shri­vas­tavab en­ti­tled Ma­rine Cur­rent Pow­er Gen­er­a­tion in Trinidad: A Case Study con­clud­ed that it was fea­si­ble to use the Ser­pent’s Mouth and the rapid wa­ters flow­ing through the Bo­cas for pow­er gen­er­a­tion.