Texas is backing a proposed Permian Basin power plant fueled by natural gas with a $1.1 billion low-interest loan, the largest such project under a state program aimed to shore up supplies after widespread blackouts in 2021.
Competitive Power Ventures will use the loan from the Texas Energy Fund to construct a 1,350-megawatt combined-cycle gas plant — among the more efficient types of fossil-fuel generation — in the Permian that’s expected to start up by 2029, CPV said Thursday in a statement. That’s enough to supply about 850,000 homes in West Texas, an emerging hub for data centers to run artificial intelligence.