In a recent opinion piece, Paraguayan outlet Ultima Hora cautions against the official and media hype surrounding hyperscale data centers and artificial intelligence, urging the country to adopt a smarter energy strategy. The article argues that while data center projects promise billions of dollars in investment, their high energy consumption, low skilled employment, and limited local value addition pose structural risks to national development.
The piece distinguishes between different types of data centers, recommending a selective policy that attracts medium-sized, specialized facilities focused on applied AI inference, regional cloud, and corporate services. These, it says, demand only 5 to 40 MW. In contrast, large AI training data centers—which can require over 100 MW—are described as “pure extractivism” and should face higher electricity tariffs and a cap on contracted power, with any additional needs self-generated.
Ultima Hora praises the tariff structure established by Decree 5307/26 for PtX (Power-to-X) industries, which convert renewable energy into green fuels or chemicals. The decree set a lower electricity price for this group, sparking protests from social groups, politicians, and even ANDE technicians who claimed it was a subsidy that would harm the state utility’s finances. The article refutes this, explaining that selling 40 MW to a single large consumer costs ANDE nothing in infrastructure, losses, or administration, whereas supplying the same power to a city of 80,000 inhabitants involves extensive grid costs, maintenance, metering, and billing.
The key metric, according to the analysis, is not total investment but the contribution to the national economy per megawatt-hour consumed. A comparison table (Cuadro 1) cited by Ultima Hora shows PtX industries as the most beneficial. The article concludes with a political framing: “Paraguay should not choose between bytes or molecules; it must choose between extractivism or development.”