By Liz Hampton and Laila Kearney<\/p>\n
DENVER\/NEW YORK, Sept 21 (Reuters) – Texas Governor Greg Abbott on Monday barred the state’s environmental agency from issuing \u200cnew permits for data centers until regulators complete a massive audit \u200cof the energy-hungry facilities seeking to connect to the Texas electrical grid.<\/p>\n
The Republican governor’s directive to \u200bthe Texas Commission on Environmental Quality effectively freezes all state-issued permits to data center developers, which had flocked to the region for its abundant electricity, land and pro-business reputation.<\/p>\n
Since the artificial intelligence boom began roughly three years ago, Texas has become \u200cone of the fastest-growing data \u2060hubs in the world. But intensifying public backlash over the facilities, and fears about AI more broadly, prompted Abbott last month \u2060to freeze the connection of new data centers to the state grid and order an audit of the facilities.<\/p>\n
By the time of that directive, there were more than \u200b470 \u200bgigawatts’ worth of data center projects and \u200bother large energy users in line \u200cto connect to the grid \u2014 more than five times the state’s peak demand.<\/p>\n
The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which operates the state grid, is in the early stages of auditing data center power use, tax incentives and water consumption, among other factors.<\/p>\n
“Simply put, Texans must come first,” Abbott said in a statement. “Data centers must \u200cpay their own way, protect our grid \u200band water, and complete the (audits).”<\/p>\n
Abbott is among a \u200bswelling number of governors who \u200bonce raced to attract data center investments \u2014 and touted their \u200cpublic benefit \u2014 but are now tightening restrictions \u200bon the developments \u200bto ease their constituents’ fears about rising power bills and environmental issues caused by the facilities.<\/p>\n
Ed Hirs, an energy fellow at the University of \u200bHouston, said Abbott was walking \u200cback “his earlier pronouncements about data centers leading to lower electricity prices.”<\/p>\n
(Reporting \u200bby Liz Hampton in Denver and Laila Kearney in New York; \u200bEditing by David Gregorio and Aurora Ellis)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Liz Hampton and Laila Kearney DENVER\/NEW YORK, Sept 21 (Reuters) – Texas Governor Greg Abbott on Monday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":443479,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[5304,153200,392,153201,27,29,28],"class_list":["post-443478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-data-centers","tag-environmental-agency","tag-greg-abbott","tag-state-grid","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443478","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=443478"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443478\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/443479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=443478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=443478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=443478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}