{"id":328929,"date":"2026-06-09T10:06:15","date_gmt":"2026-06-09T10:06:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/328929\/"},"modified":"2026-06-09T10:06:15","modified_gmt":"2026-06-09T10:06:15","slug":"a-data-center-boom-is-coming-to-texas-see-where-theyre-going","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/328929\/","title":{"rendered":"A data center boom is coming to Texas. See where they\u2019re going."},"content":{"rendered":"

Audio recording is automated for accessibility. Humans wrote and edited the story. See our AI policy<\/a>, and give us feedback<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Editor\u2019s note: Know of a new or proposed data center in Texas not listed on our map below? Fill out the form at the bottom of this link<\/a> to help us continue reporting.<\/p>\n

This story was supported by the\u00a0Pulitzer Center<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Late last year, Texas electricity officials faced an astonishing rush of requests from data center developers wanting to connect to the state\u2019s grid. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the grid operator, was logging dozens of new requests each quarter from companies that sought to pull more electricity than traditional data centers did \u2014 by a long shot.\u00a0<\/p>\n

ERCOT President and CEO Pablo Vegas called it \u201can unprecedented change in the pace of growth.\u201d<\/p>\n

Developers and speculators had been buying up land across the state, looking to cash in on a chance to construct massive warehouses filled with computers to power artificial intelligence for companies such as Meta, Amazon and Google. Older, smaller data centers ran the Internet. Artificial intelligence and cloud computing demanded much more.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The proposals kept coming. ERCOT in the last two years received 519 requests to connect large electricity users, compared to 24 such requests the year before that, according to its records as of May. The estimated electricity that large projects could need added up to a gobsmacking 438,595 megawatts \u2014 which would equal roughly a third of all the power generation in America.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ninety percent of that was for data centers, most of which aimed to start operating by 2030.<\/p>\n

ERCOT maintains that not all of those projects will come to fruition. But no one knows the real number that will ultimately connect to the grid, or how much power they\u2019ll need. ERCOT\u2019s board last week voted to change its policies for how it will review data center requests, partly in an effort to get to a more realistic expectation of how many will be built.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe projections are insane,\u201d said Dominic Boyer, a cultural anthropologist at Rice University who studies energy politics. \u201cNot all of that will be built, but just even the fact that that much is being proposed sort of suggests that there is this absolute sea change happening in terms of electricity demand.\u201d<\/p>\n

The explosion in data center projects is tied to Texas becoming \u201cone of the national leaders in digital infrastructure,\u201d said Dan Diorio, vice president of state policy for the industry association, the Data Center Coalition. The state\u2019s business-friendly regulatory environment and ability for companies to build needed energy infrastructure relatively easily attracted projects. So did its strong workforce and available land, water and fiber infrastructure, Diorio said. The Dallas-Fort Worth region in particular grew as a major market.<\/p>\n

So many of these bigger, next generation data center projects are planned for Texas that the state could surpass Virginia for the title of the world\u2019s largest data center market by 2030, according to a report<\/a> by real estate and investment management firm JLL. Gov. Greg Abbott <\/a>has touted<\/a> Texas as \u201cthe epicenter of AI development\u201d and some local officials have celebrated their arrival.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cOur competitive advantage as a state is also the source of our biggest planning challenge,\u201d said Matt Boms, executive director for the Texas Advanced Energy Business Alliance, which advocates for clean energy policies and represents some technology companies. \u201cSo there\u2019s a bit of a paradox there. But it\u2019s a good problem to have. I think a lot of other states would kill to have that kind of problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not everyone agrees. Community advocates fighting to stop data centers fear the projects will spike Texans\u2019 electric bills and make the grid less reliable. They envision a nightmare in which data centers suck up massive amounts of water, emit constant noise and spew pollution from on-site, gas-fueled power plants and backup generators.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Industry leaders say data centers create jobs, especially during construction of the behemoth sites. The facilities, which by the state\u2019s count will receive billions of dollars worth of tax breaks<\/a>, still pay billions of dollars more in state and local taxes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There are at least 248 planned data centers coming to Texas, based on a review of facilities compiled by two companies that track the industry, along with Tribune research. ERCOT does not share detailed site information publicly, and the companies\u2019 findings only found power use estimates for less than half of the projects.<\/p>\n

Among the new projects, 86 are planned in North Texas, 56 in Central Texas and 45 in West Texas. The vast majority are planned in urban and suburban counties with more than 50,000 people. About half are aimed at unincorporated areas, which have limited means for regulating them compared to cities.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Some massive projects are already under construction: A sprawling facility<\/a> in Abilene plans to use grid power plus on-site gas power and batteries to get up to 1,200 megawatts of electricity \u2014 enough to power roughly a third of the households in the city of Houston, according to census data.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Another huge campus<\/a> outside Amarillo planned by former Texas Gov. Rick Perry\u2019s company, Fermi America, could need up to 11,000 megawatts of power \u2014 enough to power 2.75 million homes, which is more than the number of households in Houston, Dallas, Austin and San Antonio combined. A third project<\/a> in oil-and-gas-dominated Pecos County could use more than 5,000 megawatts.\u00a0<\/p>\n

All three will build at least some on-site, gas-fueled power plants, which emit carbon dioxide that contributes to climate change. Two of the project websites say they will cycle water through their systems. The project in Abilene said it will require 8 million gallons of city water to fill initially \u2014 which it said is the amount a large office uses in a year.<\/p>\n

\u201cTexas has been one of the best and easiest places to move those projects forward,\u201d said Cully Cavness, co-founder of data center developer Crusoe, which is building the Abilene project, at a panel in March. \u201cIt\u2019s never easy, but it is relatively smoother here than many other states.\u201d<\/p>\n

The sun sets behind the Stargate data center on May 2, 2026, in Abilene. Jon Shapley for The Texas Tribune<\/p>\n

A potential strain on resources<\/p>\n

The sudden propagation of data centers reaching every corner of the state threatens issues that matter to Texans.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It raises triggering questions about the reliability of the grid, which failed during a 2021 winter storm when ERCOT cut power to millions in the freezing cold. It could transform quality of life, from suburban subdivisions to rural farms, where Texans want to protect their communities from construction traffic, noise pollution and industrial blight. And it renewed fears about water supply, as some parts of the state navigate an impending crisis.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of the sentiment that I\u2019m hearing from those that don\u2019t want data centers\u2026 is like, \u2018You\u2019re telling me, you know, you want to build this big thing in my community that\u2019s going to take all the energy and take the water to build the technology that\u2019s going to take the jobs away from my kids?\u201d said Joshua Rhodes, a research scientist at the University of Texas at Austin. \u201cThat\u2019s what I\u2019m hearing a lot of people are feeling, and some of that\u2019s just because this technology is so new. We just don\u2019t know what it\u2019s going to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some experts warn data centers have the potential to help push the state\u2019s fragile water supply to the brink \u2014 especially in Texas\u2019 more arid regions. Population and economic growth are already driving more demand for water, and scientists have found climate change is intensifying droughts.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Texas made its largest financial commitment to expanding water supply<\/a> last year, dedicating up to $20 billion for water projects over the next two decades. But that amount falls short of the $174 billion needed over the next 50 years, according to a projection in the draft of the 2027 state water plan<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Water experts say data centers will put more pressure on Texas\u2019 water supply. One estimate shows data centers could account for between 3% and 9% of Texas\u2019 total water use by 2040 \u2014 up from less than 1% today, according to a recent white paper from The University of Texas at Austin.<\/a> By comparison, manufacturing accounts for about 7% of the state\u2019s water use, according to the current state water plan<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Data centers demand significant amounts of water to keep their systems cool, though the industry argues its technology is improving with time to require less water. Some are proposing to use closed loop systems \u2014 which draw a large amount of water at the start but reuse it over some period of years \u2014 but Texas does not require projects to use that technology. Others run instead on cheaper evaporative cooling systems that more consistently replenish their water supply.<\/p>\n

How much water a project can use is governed locally by various entities such as utilities, special districts and river authorities.<\/p>\n

\u201cData centers are among the most efficient water users,\u201d Diorio said, citing research that he said found they use less water than semiconductor manufacturing, food and beverage production and annual municipal water system leaks. \u201cData centers will continue to deploy advanced cooling technologies that are water efficient and continue to invest in water sustainability practices.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Higher demand for electricity<\/p>\n

The new data center projects are requesting considerably more power than those of yesteryear.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A Tribune analysis found that of the planned and existing data centers that provided information about their power draw, the average facility will require five times more capacity than the average existing data center in Texas.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Among the existing data centers in the analysis, the upper limit for power capacity is 1,200 megawatts. But among planned data centers coming online, the max is nine times that.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Historically, developers went to regional utilities with their connection requests, and the utilities studied whether they had enough infrastructure to supply each project and communicated with ERCOT. But that process became untenable as requests piled up.<\/p>\n

Pending approval from regulators, ERCOT now is proposing to study proposals itself in batches so it can better evaluate how much overall power demand they will represent. Vegas, the ERCOT CEO said Tuesday that projects seeking to draw about 100,000 megawatts of power would qualify to be in the first group to be reviewed by ERCOT by April.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just this big tsunami wave (of projects) that is impending, and trying to crash down, and historically that was coming directly on the utility,\u201d said Beth Garza, a senior fellow with the R Street Institute who also represents residential customers on an ERCOT committee. \u201cNow with the implementation of the batch process, ERCOT is a little bit of that seawall in front of the utilities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Under the new rules, to be considered by the Public Utility Commission of Texas, developers would first have to pay $50,000 per megawatt proposed and prove they have leased or purchased the land for their facilities before their project will be studied for connection to the ERCOT grid. Vegas described the new process as a potential solution to a national problem of how to balance economic benefits with grid reliability.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is an issue that is affecting the whole globe and certainly the country,\u201d Vegas said. \u201cEverybody is trying to figure out how to do this in a reliable, stable way.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"ERCOT CEO Pablo Vegas listens as Gov. Greg Abbott speaks during a press conference on Jan 22, 2026, regarding incoming inclement weather in Austin. Sergio Flores for The Texas Tribune<\/p>\n

In their review, ERCOT will figure out how many more power lines and related infrastructure need to be built to meet the additional demand. Some of that cost could be added on top of what researchers found are already rising electric bills for Texas power customers \u2014 residential consumers currently pay more of those costs than industrial ones.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not clear how much of the infrastructure bill data centers will pick up, and regulators are evaluating the issue. Some experts have advocated for more of it to fall on companies to ensure affordability and support a variety of additional, local solutions such as investment in energy efficiency so people use less electricity at home.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can solve it,\u201d said Margo Weisz, executive director of the Texas Energy Poverty Research Institute, a nonprofit that works on making electricity more affordable. \u201cWhether we will solve it is another question.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other data center projects could meanwhile sit apart from the grid entirely by building their own power generation, such as gas-fueled power plants. Some projects also plan to install back-up diesel generators<\/a> in case of power outages.\u00a0<\/p>\n

ERCOT won\u2019t be assessing whether there\u2019s enough electricity available to serve data centers\u2019 needs. It\u2019s operating on the assumption that the market will meet the demand: the opportunity to make money selling power to these new customers will incentivize other companies to build more power generation, whether it\u2019s gas-fired power plants, solar and wind farms or battery facilities.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Legislators also passed a provision last year allowing ERCOT to direct large data centers that have backup power to cut back their grid use during emergencies.<\/p>\n

Andrew Mahaleris, spokesperson for Abbott, said in a statement that protecting water and power needed by Texans will take priority over attracting investment.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cGovernor Abbott will continue to work with the Legislature to protect Texans and ensure their voices are heard,\u201d Mahaleris said.<\/p>\n

Local resistance<\/p>\n

In February in San Marcos, just south of Austin, residents packed City Hall to protest a proposed data center that would have consumed more than 25 million gallons of water annually \u2014 in their view, threatening the city\u2019s beloved namesake river that flowed through town.<\/p>\n

One protester wore a blow-up salamander costume, referencing the endangered Texas blind salamander native to the river. A crowd of hundreds outside sang, chanted and held signs that read \u201cKeep San Marcos wet\u201d and \u201c2 dry 4 AI.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Inside, residents told council members over an eight-hour meeting to reject the zoning change needed for the project to move forward.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of us met at the water, and that\u2019s what brought us here,\u201d said Randi Finn, who was running a childcare station at the protest for parents who wanted to testify against the center. \u201cWe want these springs to be here for our kids and for our grandkids.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"San Marcos City Hall reaches capacity before a city council meeting regarding a proposed data center on Feb. 17, 2026. Leila Saidane for The Texas Tribune<\/p>\n

Similar scenes have played out across Texas, from Round Rock<\/a> to Waco<\/a> to Athens<\/a>. Residents aren\u2019t willing to wait for legislators, who have vowed to look at data center issues before the next regular session begins in January.<\/p>\n

The trouble is, when it comes to protecting quality of life, Texas gives cities and counties markedly different powers. Cities such as San Marcos have zoning powers that allow them to deny projects. San Marcos council members voted the proposal down.<\/p>\n

But outside of city limits, counties \u2014 where a large number of the proposed data centers plan to build \u2014 have little power to control where or how projects are built.<\/p>\n

County leaders can vote down tax abatement agreements, removing some of the economic incentive, but that wouldn\u2019t block a company from building a data center.\u00a0<\/p>\n

State lawmakers \u2014 many of them Republicans stuck between outcry from communities that don\u2019t want these projects<\/a> and a president who does \u2014 have not shown much interest in giving counties more regulatory power.<\/p>\n

Roughly two-thirds of the projects are slated for counties that voted in 2024 for President Donald Trump, according to the Tribune\u2019s analysis, creating headaches for Texas\u2019 Republican majority.<\/p>\n

Some county leaders have considered how to block or slow projects. But when Hood County commissioners tried to pass<\/a> a moratorium on data center projects, Republican State Sen. Paul Bettencourt<\/a> fired off a threatening letter to the attorney general arguing they had no right to do so. Other counties weighing moratoriums dropped the idea; one that went through with it got sued by the developer and revoked its own moratorium<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s an underlying no-growth philosophy \u2014 that\u2019s not a majority of the party but it\u2019s there \u2014 that\u2019s driving this,\u201d said Bettencourt, who represents part of the Houston area. \u201cThat\u2019s not good public policy long-term.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Caldwell County, where at least three data center projects plan to locate, County Judge Hoppy Haden said he\u2019s lost so much sleep over the issue that he now has big bags under his eyes. He\u2019s taken heat from citizens at town halls where he feels made out to look like he\u2019s pro-data center when really he just has little authority to slow or stop problematic projects in his county south of Austin best known for Lockhart barbecue.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI would be a liar if I said that didn\u2019t bother me because it does,\u201d Haden said. \u201cI\u2019m just as concerned as everybody else and we\u2019re doing what we can and certainly we\u2019re not just sitting around hoping they go away.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll the town halls in the world are not going to make these guys go away, unfortunately,\u201d he added. \u201cWe have to come up with solutions to the issues that they create. Because they\u2019re going to still come.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"The Stargate data center seen through a locked gate on May 2, 2026, in Abilene. Jon Shapley for The Texas Tribune<\/p>\n

In Hays County, which straddles Interstate 35 south of Austin and includes San Marcos, Judge Ruben Becerra wanted to set up his own county department to review the projects to make sure they can be run sustainably. He knew the county\u2019s existing development services office that usually handles requests for say, an H-E-B distribution center, wasn\u2019t equipped to understand the impacts of a data center.<\/p>\n

\u201cTheres no world where I\u2019m going to sit idle, sit on my hands, and watch it happen, without at least fighting for our communities,\u201d Becerra said, adding, \u201cDo I have the statutory authority to do X, Y, Z? I really don\u2019t care. I\u2019d rather push hard and ask for forgiveness than to lay down and say, well I can\u2019t do it, and throw my hands up in the air and say well it\u2019s up to the [Legislature] and I\u2019ll wait for 10 more years to see if something actually happens.\u201d<\/p>\n

ABOUT OUR DATA SET\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Texas Tribune acquired information on data centers from Cleanview and Data Center Map, two companies that compile and sell data on operating and planned data centers. The Tribune joined these datasets based on location and manually identified and removed duplicates that appeared in both sources. This data was filtered to data centers that had latitude and longitude coordinates, which were used alongside Census data to determine the types of areas data centers are being built in. The data was supplemented with other data centers identified with Tribune reporting.<\/p>\n

Paul Cobler and Alejandra Martinez contributed reporting.<\/p>\n

Disclosure: Google, H-E-B, Rice University and the University of Texas at Austin have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune\u2019s journalism. Find a complete\u00a0list of them here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Audio recording is automated for accessibility. Humans wrote and edited the story. See our AI policy, and give…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":328930,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133,5304,6083,19025,6473],"class_list":["post-328929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-data-centers","tag-electric-reliability-council-of-texas","tag-texas-public-utility-commission","tag-well-a-homepage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=328929"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328929\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/328930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=328929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=328929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=328929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}