Co-Located Power Is the New Default. Texas Counties Can't Stop It.

Google and AES just signed a 20-year co-located power deal in Wilbarger County that puts the generation assets directly on the data center campus, sidestepping ERCOT's transmission bottleneck entirely. AES now claims nearly 12 GW in signed data center energy agreements, and they're not alone: Amp Z is pursuing 2.1 GW near Lufkin, 1606 Corp. is acquiring a 55 MW biomass plant for behind-the-meter operations, and Soluna is converting curtailed wind into compute in Willacy County. Meanwhile, the counties where these projects are landing have almost no tools to shape what's coming. Hays County's own legal counsel killed a proposed moratorium on water-intensive development, State Sen. Paul Bettencourt asked the AG to investigate any such attempts, and San Marcos rejected a $1.5 billion project outright after hundreds protested. With the next regular legislative session not convening until January 2027, the gap between local resource pressure and local regulatory authority is widening fast.