{"id":472181,"date":"2026-10-21T01:28:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-21T01:28:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/472181\/"},"modified":"2026-10-21T01:28:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-21T01:28:09","slug":"texas-continued-permitting-data-centers-after-abbotts-pause-report-finds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/472181\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas continued permitting data centers after Abbott’s pause, report finds"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article originally appeared on\u00a0Inside Climate News<\/a>, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Regulators in Texas did not stop processing permits for data center projects when Gov. Greg Abbott ordered a pause last month, according to an analysis of public records released Monday<\/a> by the oil and gas watchdog group FracTracker.<\/p>\n

Amid an upswell of public opposition to the booming buildout of digital infrastructure in Texas, Abbott directed the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality in a Sept. 21 letter<\/a> \u201cto halt all permits sought by data centers.\u201d<\/p>\n

But FracTracker, in collaboration with Public Citizen, identified 35 permitting actions taken by the TCEQ for data center projects in subsequent weeks.<\/p>\n

\u201cTCEQ has continued reviewing applications and issuing approvals that allow data center development to proceed,\u201d the groups said in a press release Monday. \u201cThese actions do not signal an agency trying to pause.\u201d<\/p>\n

In response, Abbott Press Secretary Andrew Mahaleris indicated that the pause applied to approval, not processing, of permits.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo permits have been approved,\u201d Mahaleris said in a statement. \u201cIn line with the Governor\u2019s directive, TCEQ has not taken and will not take any proactive actions related to the approval of data center permits.\u201d<\/p>\n

Abbott has described his moratorium as an opportunity for state agencies to evaluate the facilities\u2019 impact on water resources and grid stability.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo other state agency shall move forward with regulatory approvals related to data centers until this information is acquired,\u201d Abbott wrote in his Sept. 21 letter to TCEQ executive director Kelly Keel.<\/p>\n

TCEQ responded to Abbott in an Oct. 19 letter<\/a>, which was provided to Inside Climate News by Ryan Vise, TCEQ\u2019s director of external relations.<\/p>\n

In the letter, Steven Schar, TCEQ\u2019s interim executive director, wrote: \u201cTCEQ staff are screening pending permit applications to determine if they are subject to the directive. If a permit application is subject to the directive, TCEQ has paused that permit application.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since the Sept. 21 directive, the TCEQ has fast-tracked or assigned engineers to 14 permits, approved stormwater coverage for 11, certified emissions estimates for seven and issued public notice for three, according to permitting documents collected by FracTracker and Public Citizen.<\/p>\n

The permits regard construction of gas power generation facilities<\/a> for energy-hungry facilities. All of the largest gas power projects<\/a> currently proposed in Texas<\/a> are specifically intended to serve<\/a> data centers, which are primarily planned to run artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n

The projects would release tens of thousands of tons of regulated pollutants, according to permitting documents, as well as more than 100 million tons per year of greenhouse gases\u2014an enormous amount roughly equal to the annual emissions of a mid-sized industrialized country.<\/p>\n

The day after Abbott\u2019s pause on data center permits, on Sept. 22, FracTracker and Public Citizen found that TCEQ mailed notices of preliminary approval to three major projects: NRG Prairie Energy Center<\/a>, VoltaGrid\u2019s ABI-1 power plant and Nexus<\/a>\u2019s self-powered data center in Hubbard.<\/p>\n

The agency opened public comment periods on two of those projects in following days.<\/p>\n

FracTracker and Public Citizen found approvals of stormwater management permits for data center construction issued after Sept. 21, including for Caldwell Valley Technology Park<\/a> in Caldwell County, Crusoe\u2019s Abilene campus<\/a> and EdgeConneX\u2019s Cedar Creek campus<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The report identified numerous other projects that continue to advance through permitting. For example, records show<\/a> the TCEQ received a permit application for generators at Edged Energy in Dallas on Oct. 6, and an engineer completed an initial review on Oct. 9.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur research uncovered glaring inconsistencies between regulatory actions and Governor Abbott\u2019s directives,\u201d said Sam Law, manager of communications at FracTracker Alliance and author of the report. \u201cWe need an actual pause to study the threats posed to the land, water and livelihoods of Texans.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This article originally appeared on\u00a0Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy and the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":472182,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133],"class_list":["post-472181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472181","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=472181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472181\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/472182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=472181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=472181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=472181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}