Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) just announced a moratorium on all data center approvals through the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT) and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) until the agencies have completed an audit of data centers seeking approval to connect to Texas’s electric grid. According to The Texas Tribune, the governor wants to ensure that data center applicants provide the following: tax break information, power use and generation, water use and cooling operations, community impact reduction measures, and facility ownership. Applicants that haven’t submitted these details will not be allowed to connect to the grid.
“Our top priority is to protect Texans’ safety and quality of life,” Gov. Abbott wrote in his statement. “Any project that fails to comply with the requirements set forth by the PUCT and ERCOT, and by state law, must be denied connection to the Texas grid. Simply put, Texans must come first.”
This review reportedly stemmed from several data centers’ failure to comply with a PUCT survey to determine water and power usage. The agency says that it asked 377 data center companies to send the required information, but only 28 have submitted so far.
While this is not a statewide moratorium, it nonetheless affects the progress of many data center projects going through ERCOT approval. More than 1,800 projects are awaiting the go-signal from the regulator to connect to the grid, 90% of which are data centers. The combined demand that these applications will put on the grid is expected to hit 474 gigawatts, which is five times that of the current peak demand that ERCOT has recorded and is much higher than forecasted data center demand by 2035.
This will put a dent in a lot of data center build-outs in Texas, but it still does not affect all projects, unlike the statewide ban that New York imposed. For example, El Paso, Texas, is outside the jurisdiction of ERCOT, so data center developments in the country can still continue unimpeded. Projects that are also bringing their own power are unaffected, as they do not have to connect to the ERCOT grid.
Data center opponents say that this measure isn’t enough, although some agree that this is a step in the right direction. They say that the state legislature needs to pass a law to regulate the industry, which is already the second biggest in the U.S. after Virginia. “Without legislative action, this directive is all hat and no cattle — empty political rhetoric wrapped in meaningless fluff,” Commissioner Sid Miller wrote on the Texas Department of Agriculture’s official Facebook Page. “Texans need laws with teeth, not another press release designed to make it look like something is being done while hyperscale projects continue moving forward.”
State Representative Gina Hinojosa Abbott’s opponent in the gubernatorial race in November 2026 had harsher comments for the governor. “So nice to see another strongly worded letter from Abbott after he proudly made Texas the wild west of data centers. Abbott’s call for a ‘pause’ could be for one day – and no one buys it,” she wrote in a statement. “He’s taken millions from data center CEOs while giving Texans lip service to non-existent restrictions.”
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