As data center development picks up, Texans are wondering how they can be built more sustainably and be better neighbors to the communities they build in.<\/p>\n
Enough propaganda\u00a0<\/p>\n
Even as developers work to respond to concerns, issues with transparency and honesty have degraded public trust.<\/p>\n
Bastrop community members want to know what kind of work the proposed facility will do and who will operate the facility once it\u2019s built. Some are also frustrated with ways that the data center has been advertised. On a billboard posted on the side of Highway 71, an image of a firefighter is accompanied by text that reads \u201ctax revenue from data centers help fund his salary.\u201d<\/p>\n
But in fact, most of the firefighters in the region are volunteers, according to data collected<\/a> by Texas A&M last November.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s just propaganda,\u201d said Natalie Aboudaoud, a community business owner. \u201c\u200aWhat’s really happening is just dishonest and definitely would be detrimental to this community.\u201d<\/p>\n Community members were also upset with proposed tax cuts that the development would receive. But just hours before the town hall, developers dropped those tax break requests.<\/p>\n Some residents think that\u2019s a sign of how developers have misjudged the residents of Bastrop and the strength of their opposition to data centers.<\/p>\n \u201c\u200aThey’ve totally misunderstood and underestimated Bastrop, and we’ve shown it here,\u201d Jeanette Shelton, a Bastrop resident, said. \u201cWe’re only getting started.\u201d<\/p>\n Residents aren\u2019t opposed to development or blind to the potential tax benefits, but they don\u2019t want it in their backyards. Even with developers promising<\/a> \u201csmarter infrastructure\u201d and \u201ctransparency\u201d locals still feel like they\u2019re not being heard.<\/p>\n Water wishlists<\/p>\n Data centers can use millions of gallons of water a day, but they don\u2019t have to.<\/p>\n Margaret Cook, the vice president of water and community resilience at the Houston Advanced Research Center think tank, said data centers being built in water-scarce areas like Texas can limit their water use for things like air conditioning and flushing toilets if they use a closed-loop system paired with air chillers.<\/p>\n Cook said data centers would use less water if state leaders created regulations and incentives for developers such as requiring them to pay the cost of hooking up to a local water system, use non-potable water when possible and ensure local communities have enough water for residential use before a data center moves in.<\/p>\n Above all, the policy change Cook is fighting for is requiring data centers to be transparent about their water use. She said not knowing<\/a> how much water data centers are demanding from Texas lakes and aquifers could cause communities to overestimate their supply<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThe issue is not that there are other water users,\u201d she said. \u201cThe issue is that those water uses already exist, and we’re adding data centers on top of them, and we’re adding them at a rate that we’ve never seen before. And we need to have the information to be able to plan for that.\u201d<\/p>\n The state tried to get estimates of water usage from data centers, but the majority of them didn\u2019t <\/a>reply to the survey.<\/p>\n But some companies, including the tech mammoth Google, say they are trying to be more transparent in their sustainability efforts. <\/p>\n “Communities deserve to know how much water data centers use and water planners need to know how much water data centers use,”<\/p>\n Ben Townsend, Google\u2019s global head of infrastructure strategy and sustainability<\/p>\n Speaking to lawmakers at a June hearing for the Texas House Committee on Natural Resources, Ben Townsend, Google\u2019s global head of infrastructure strategy and sustainability, said water should not be a “black-box” topic for data centers. <\/p>\n \u201cCommunities deserve to know how much water data centers use and water planners need to know how much water data centers use,” he said. <\/p>\n Townsend said Google began disclosing that data publicly<\/a> in 2022 \u2014 at which point the company reported using 93.3 million gallons of water for its Texas data center projects. That number jumped to 135.8 million gallons in 2023. <\/p>\n Google has not publicly disclosed its Texas water usage for 2024 or 2025 yet, nor did it respond to requests for that information. <\/p>\n Townsend also said communities should feel empowered to bring a water \u201cwishlist\u201d to developers looking to build data centers in their neighborhoods.<\/p>\n \u201cThey have room in their budgets to also help fund public water infrastructure and positive water outcomes for communities,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Townsend said all of Google\u2019s data centers being built in Texas will be cooled with air instead of water. But by saving water, data center developers are running into a new problem: finding the power.<\/p>\n Demystifying the ‘BYOG’ promise <\/p>\n Texas politicians are wary of the strain data centers will put on the state\u2019s grid. Gov. Greg Abbott is telling data centers to \u201cbring their own power.\u201d That\u2019s part of what motivated the developers in Bastrop County to propose a power plant for the data center. <\/p>\n But Joshua Rhodes, an energy researcher at the University of Texas at Austin, said the \u201cconcept of BYOG or bring your own generation\u201d can be a bit complicated.<\/p>\n \u201cIt’s not as simple as, you know, just going down to Home Depot and buying a generator or something like that,\u201d Rhodes said.<\/p>\n That\u2019s because developers need to ensure that whatever power source they choose is reliable enough to support their data center operations.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the industry, we call [it] \u2018five nines\u2019 of reliability \u2014 like 99.999% of the time, they want to get power,\u201d Rhodes said. \u201cAny given power plant is not going to be that reliable, and so if you want to completely serve your own systems, you might need to build not one, but two, maybe three power plants the same size.\u201d\u201d<\/p>\n Rhodes said building these power plants can also be a challenge. As the demand for data centers grows, so does the demand for power generating technologies. That has caused backlogs for some companies that produce gas turbines and transformers, including GE Vernova<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you’re not already in line for a power plant, GE Vernova says you’re not getting one till the 2030s,\u201d Rhodes said. \u201cSo it’s kind of being stuck between a rock and a hard place in terms of the grid can’t move fast enough \u2014 maybe I’ll try to go get my own power plants. Well, everybody else wants to buy power plants.\u201d<\/p>\n All the proposed data centers in Texas are collectively asking for more than 400 gigawatts of power.<\/a> In the next five years, the first batch of data centers want to bring 200 gigawatts of power online<\/a>.<\/p>\n UT Austin engineering professor Michael Webber said adding that much capacity to the grid is \u201cimpossible, implausible and unnecessary,\u201d because delays in raw materials will slow data center growth down.<\/p>\n But that doesn\u2019t mean data center development will come to a screeching halt.<\/p>\n Webber thinks developers are going to throw a bunch of money at the grid to start generating new power as fast as possible, which means more oil drilling, natural gas production, solar panels, wind turbines and transmission lines.<\/p>\n \u201cIn fact, [they] might enhance our grid. And I would say that’s the goal. Let’s get the rich companies to pay to upgrade the grid.\u201d<\/p>\n Michael Webber, engineering professor at UT Austin<\/p>\n That will mean more pollution, noise, and tearing down green spaces and interrupting wildlife, he said.<\/p>\n Despite all that, he said he\u2019s hopeful.<\/p>\n \u201cIf we install a lot of data centers and they are efficient and they use closed loop dry cooling, they will not hurt our grid or our water resources,\u201d he said \u201cIn fact, [they] might enhance our grid. And I would say that’s the goal. Let’s get the rich companies to pay to upgrade the grid.\u201d<\/p>\n Just like Townsend, the sustainability representative from Google, Webber said communities should negotiate with developers that want to build data centers in their neighborhoods.<\/p>\n \u201cWe’re at a magic moment where data centers are in a rush and have a lot of money, and we have a lot of needs, and we could trade on that where we say, \u2018Here are the needs we’d like you to fulfill in exchange for letting you move quickly,\u2019\u201d he said.<\/p>\n A little regulation goes a long way\u00a0<\/p>\n Dan Stanzione, director of the Texas Advanced Computing Center, said it\u2019s possible for data centers to be better neighbors by using more sustainable practices.<\/p>\n Many servers inside the TACC are cooled using water from a million-gallon storage tank that was filled in 2012 and hasn\u2019t been refilled since, Stanzione said. TACC is also experimenting with cooling some of its servers in mineral oil \u2014 which doesn\u2019t use any water.<\/p>\n Michael Minasi<\/p>\n \/<\/p>\n KUT News<\/p>\n Immersion cooling requires no water, but is more expensive and harder to scale.<\/p>\n![\"Computer](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/1788397483_919_.jpeg\"\/)
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