{"id":225964,"date":"2026-03-29T16:27:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-29T16:27:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/225964\/"},"modified":"2026-03-29T16:27:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-29T16:27:11","slug":"inside-the-power-deal-behind-metas-el-paso-data-center-now-at-10-billion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/225964\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside the power deal behind Meta\u2019s El Paso data center now at $10 billion"},"content":{"rendered":"

As Meta Platform begins construction on its new multi-billion dollar El Paso data center, El Paso Electric is working to rapidly build a power plant for the facility that ratepayers will pay for within a few years.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Filings with the Public Utility Commission of Texas show the utility plans to shift the power plant\u2019s cost to all customers after an initial one- to five-year \u201cbridge\u201d period where Meta would pay all of El Paso Electric\u2019s cost to deliver power to its data center. The nearly $500 million, 366-megawatt facility would rely on 813 small gas-fired generators that don\u2019t require water but would emit pollutants such as carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Meta executives on Thursday unveiled a massive expansion of its planned data center in Northeast \u2013 boosting its investment from $1.5 billion to $10 billion. The company also announced increased investments in the community, including job training grants and bill payment assistance.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Executives said over 4,000 workers will help construct the data center, and Meta plans to hire 300 full-time employees to operate the facility. The tax break agreement between the city and Meta requires the company to hire only 50 workers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In promoting the increased investments, Meta said it\u2019s also working to offset the data center\u2019s impacts, citing investments in renewable energy and water projects.<\/p>\n

Still, the public backlash to Meta\u2019s data center \u2013 as well as opposition to the separate Project Jupiter data center<\/a> in Do\u00f1a Ana County, New Mexico \u2013 has grown so large that the city organized numerous meetings through April 8<\/a> to get community feedback about whether the city should seek to attract more data centers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Construction begins on a Meta data center, located between Stan Roberts Sr. Ave. and State Line Road in Northeast El Paso, Oct. 13, 2025. (Corrie Boudreaux\/El Paso Matters)<\/p>\n

Most opponents are concerned about the facility\u2019s water usage, air pollution from an on-site power plant, and the tax breaks the city and county granted to Meta. The incentives include an 80% break on city and county property taxes for decades and $12.5 million the city gave to repair the road infrastructure immediately around the data center.\u00a0<\/p>\n

El Paso Water estimates the data center<\/a> will consume an average of 400,000 gallons of water per day; the city-owned utility currently pumps an average of about 110 million gallons of water to customers every day.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want data centers for generative AI here in El Paso. They\u2019re not the right fit for our community,\u201d District 8 city Rep. Chris Canales said in a video posted to social media on Tuesday. Canales voted in favor of the data center economic development incentives during his first year in office in late 2023.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can say clearly, if I were voting on this today, I wouldn\u2019t support it,\u201d said Canales, who\u2019s up for reelection in November. \u201cI wish we had voted differently in 2023, and I\u2019m sorry for my role in it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"A rendering of the exterior of Meta\u2019s planned El Paso data center. (Courtesy Meta Platforms) <\/p>\n

Meta commitments in El Paso<\/p>\n

In addition to upping spending and hiring targets, Meta said it will create a $500,000 grant program for the El Paso Independent School District to fund hands-on job training programs. The company also said it will donate $25,000 to El Paso Water to fund bill assistance for ratepayers.<\/p>\n

On the water front, the company said it will pay for projects with the nonprofit DigDeep to provide water and sewer service to 100 El Paso homes for the first time.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Brad Davis, director of data center community and economic development, said Meta is working to fund more water-efficient irrigation systems for local farmers so they use less water than they do currently.<\/p>\n

Meta has said its water-related projects will conserve twice as much water in El Paso as the data center consumes.<\/p>\n

Davis said Meta is also planning to develop renewable energy projects in the region to offset the emissions from the data center\u2019s nearby power plant.<\/p>\n

\u201cData centers and this infrastructure is critical to everything we do on the internet. You think of the cloud, those are data centers,\u201d Davis said. \u201cWhen you think about the tangible aspects of the data centers themselves, it\u2019s a very large building filled with many computer servers that are storing, processing, and transmitting data all over the world.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd when you have a global platform like ours and intentions of deploying that AI everywhere, it\u2019s going to require very large amounts of infrastructure similar to what we\u2019re talking about here in El Paso,\u201d he added.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He declined to disclose the salaries for workers at the data center, but he said they would be \u201cwell-paid.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Construction begins on a Meta data center, located between Stan Roberts Sr. Ave. and State Line Road in Northeast El Paso, Oct. 13, 2025. (Corrie Boudreaux\/El Paso Matters)<\/p>\n

Where will the data center\u2019s electricity come from?\u00a0<\/p>\n

El Paso Electric in December asked the PUC to allow the utility to build the 366-megawatt, natural gas-fired power station<\/a> to provide electricity to the AI data center in Northeast. For perspective, the utility currently has about 2,800 megawatts of total generation capacity currently.<\/p>\n

El Paso Electric wants to work with a Houston-based company called Enchanted Rock, which produces small, gas-fired generators that it sells to customers such as the grocery store chain H-E-B. The chain uses them as a backup for stores if the power grid goes out.\u00a0<\/p>\n

El Paso Electric wants to use a noncompetitive procurement to contract with Enchanted Rock and stack 813 modular generators together to power Meta\u2019s data center. The generators are air-cooled and don\u2019t require water for cooling.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The proposed power plant \u2013 a collection of small generators \u2013 would be far different than the big solar fields or the centralized nuclear and gas-fired power stations on which El Paso Electric now relies.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The $500 million facility would be the biggest power generation facility Enchanted Rock has built \u2013 and more than twice the $217 million El Paso Electric spent to build the 228-megawatt Newman 6 unit.\u00a0<\/p>\n

El Paso Electric said it has never worked with the company before this project. Typically, the utility conducts lengthy, competitive procurement processes to find the cheapest sources of electricity to develop.\u00a0<\/p>\n

El Paso Electric said it chose the Enchanted Rock configuration because that\u2019s what Meta preferred and because no other resource options could meet the load requirements in 2027 and be constructed colocated with the data center.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Project was developed in response to requests by (Meta) to accelerate expansion of its original load requirements by 2027,\u201d El Paso Electric wrote in filings.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Despite the utility\u2019s executives claiming Meta\u2019s data center will not impact customer rates, El Paso Electric told the PUC that it plans to eventually charge customers the cost of the power plant it\u2019s building to serve Meta.<\/p>\n

The utility said Meta will pay the full cost of what it\u2019s calling the McCloud Generation Facility for a \u201cbridge period\u201d between one to five years. After that, El Paso Electric \u201cwill incorporate the cost of the facility into its total jurisdictional cost of service and retail rates,\u201d the utility said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe cost of McCloud Generation will be borne entirely by (Meta) during the bridge period,\u201d James Schichtl, a vice president with El Paso Electric, told the PUC. \u201cThere will be no rate impact on any customer other than (Meta) during the bridge period, and any subsequent change to rates designed to recover costs for McCloud Generation would require PUCT approval.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

El Paso Electric said it expects the Enchanted Rock facility would produce one megawatt-hour of electricity at an average cost of $41.70. The gas-fired Newman 6 unit, by comparison, produces one megawatt-hour at a cost of $22.54 on average, while the utility\u2019s power plants in Far East El Paso County and in Sunland Park, New Mexico, produce one megawatt-hour at a price of $26.75, according to filings El Paso Electric submitted to the PUC.\u00a0<\/p>\n

According to figures published by Enchanted Rock, the generators planned for the data center\u2019s power plant would emit annually about 117 metric tons of nitrogen oxides, which produce ground-level ozone, trigger asthma and cause respiratory problems. El Paso Electric\u2019s proposed generating facility would increase the utility\u2019s NOx emissions by about 5% compared with the level it reported in 2024.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Enchanted Rock declined to comment.<\/p>\n

The power plant dedicated to Meta\u2019s data center would also produce around 2,700 metric tons of carbon monoxide annually, as well as 42 metric tons of particulate matter, the small air particles that can cause a wide range of health problems, according to the emissions data published by Enchanted Rock and filings El Paso Electric submitted to the PUC.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Air quality data show carbon monoxide pollution in El Paso is well below federal air standards, but particulate matter pollution here far exceeds<\/a> safe levels established by the Environmental Protection Agency.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Public Utility Commission of Texas in the months ahead will decide whether to approve the plant\u2019s construction.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is comical to think that Meta cares what our water looks like in 10 years, to care what utility bills look like in 10 years, that they care about the people who are going to have to live next to this gas plant,\u201d said Matthew Rodriguez, an organizer with the local advocacy group Amanecer People\u2019s Project. \u201cThis is completely irresponsible.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Economic development, jobs<\/p>\n

To supporters of Meta\u2019s investment in El Paso, the jobs at the data center are a win but only part of the picture. That\u2019s because other companies could come to El Paso to do business with Meta, or because Meta\u2019s project signals El Paso is pro-business, said Jon Barela, CEO of the Borderplex Alliance.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThese jobs are worth it. They\u2019re high-paying and transformational in a great way for our region,\u201d Barela said during a panel discussion Thursday at the Plaza Hotel in Downtown. \u201cWe have to get on the train now. The AI supply chain is a golden opportunity for us to move our wages forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

In general, El Paso Electric is incentivized to welcome data centers such as Meta\u2019s into its service territory. For one, data centers that run constantly are customers that produce steady revenue and cash flow compared with residential customers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

El Paso Electric also wants to build new infrastructure that serves the data center, because it can earn a profit margin on that capital investment; the utility said that the McCloud facility would produce a profit of $32.3 million for El Paso Electric over the plant\u2019s life.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Utilities have large, fixed costs to maintain infrastructure \u2013 such as poles, wires and power plants \u2013 that they recover by selling customers electricity. So, selling more energy to Meta means the utility can spread those fixed costs out more so that residential customers bear a smaller portion of the utility\u2019s fixed costs. However, El Paso Electric has not publicly quantified the impact of Meta\u2019s arrival on residential customers\u2019 bills.<\/p>\n

Meta\u2019s data center is \u201clikely to benefit all of EPE\u2019s Texas retail customers,\u201d Schichtl said. \u201cThis is because the fixed costs in EPE\u2019s system related to existing generation and transmission, as well as other costs, will be spread over significantly more energy than in the current system once the Data Center is fully operational.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some community organizers have called on the city to cancel the economic development agreement with Meta, and for El Paso Water to cancel its water supply agreement for the data center. However, Meta has already broken ground at the site.<\/p>\n

\"\"A rendering from Meta depicting the company\u2019s planned Northeast El Paso data center. (Courtesy of Meta Platforms) <\/p>\n

\u201cWe have 1,500 construction workers on site today. We are getting ready to pour foundations,\u201d said Holli Davies, a community development manager with Meta. \u201cWe are moving forward.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Kelly Tomblin, El Paso Electric\u2019s chief executive, said projects such as Meta\u2019s will help drive job growth and increase wages in El Paso long-term. She said the data center is part of a bigger vision of economic development, and said for El Pasoans to reject a \u201cjust say no\u201d mindset toward corporate investment.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a bigger vision for this region. We know that where we\u2019re performing right now is not our full potential,\u201d Tomblin said Thursday during the panel discussion Downtown. \u201cSo, when we talk about data centers, I just always want to put it into context. It\u2019s part of a bigger vision for growing this community and growing our region and for economic prosperity. And Meta will add to that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Data Center Community Meetings<\/p>\n

The city of El Paso is hosting open-house style community meetings to gather feedback on a proposed policy guide for data centers that might want to operate in El Paso in the future. The last three meetings, scheduled from 5:30 to 7 p.m., are as follows:<\/p>\n

Monday, March 30: The Beast Urban Recreation Center, 13501 Jason Crandall Dr.<\/p>\n

Thursday, April 2: Chamizal Community Center, 2119 Cypress Ave.<\/p>\n

Wednesday, April 8: Wayne Thornton Community Center, 3134 Jefferson Ave.<\/p>\n

Information: City of El Paso Data Center Resource Hub<\/a><\/p>\n

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