Every Queued Project Must Now Prove Water and Generation, With No End Date Set

Governor Greg Abbott ordered the Public Utility Commission of Texas and ERCOT to audit every datacenter project in the interconnection queue before any new grid connections advance, freezing forward movement on a queue that now holds more than 1,800 projects representing 474 GW, over five times the state's record peak demand. Roughly 90% of those requests are datacenters. ERCOT paused its Batch Zero transmission planning study to execute the order, and no completion timeline has been set.

New York moved first on a statewide freeze. Governor Kathy Hochul signed Executive Order No. 62 on July 14, halting discretionary state environmental permits for any datacenter needing 50 MW or more until the Department of Public Service finishes a Generic Environmental Impact Statement. The order carries no fixed deadline, and NYISO's queue held nearly 12 GW of datacenter load as of May 2026. Local permits and zoning approvals aren't touched, so projects moving through municipal channels bypass the freeze.

On the federal track, Senator Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) released the GRID Savings Act, which would direct FERC to make users above 150 MW fund their own interconnection upgrades rather than spreading costs to ratepayers. Heinrich rejects the moratorium path outright. Both signals point the same direction: benefit-sharing and cost-allocation are becoming baseline cost outside Texas. Texas developers with shovel-ready sites and secured generation hold the advantage, but the audit means that advantage now runs through a verification process with no announced end date.

Abbott's directive expands a June 10 order and requires each applicant to disclose tax incentives received, projected power and water use, on-site generation plans, cooling technology, community impact mitigation, and ownership. Projects that fail the verification "must be denied connection." The move followed Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick and Senator Charles Schwertner calling Friday for the PUCT to reject $33 billion in pending extra-high-voltage transmission applications serving both oil-and-gas and datacenter loads.

Baker Botts partner Landon Lill read it as politically necessary; Public Citizen's Adrian Shelley called it "another Band-Aid." The gap that matters: two already-stretched agencies now have to define "audit completion" across 1,800-plus projects with no stated standard or date.

Bottom line: developers in the queue should file water sourcing, on-site generation, and community-benefit documentation now, before staff begin review, and model carrying cost against an open-ended timeline rather than a quarter.

The audit has a structural boundary: developers building behind-the-meter generation can skip traditional grid connection entirely, so the pause won't capture self-supplied projects. That aligns with where capital is already moving. Enverus projects 40% of new U.S. datacenter capacity through 2030 will run on privately controlled generation, roughly 62 GW of mostly natural gas, and names Texas as the primary beneficiary on cost, gas infrastructure, and land.

Speed to energization, not policy, is driving the shift, which makes private generation permanent infrastructure rather than a stopgap. El Paso sits outside ERCOT's footprint too, another path around the freeze.

Bottom line: tying a project to grid supply now carries real risk of missing energization windows; developers who secured generation first are the ones the audit leaves free to move.

Hut 8 disclosed two 15-year leases at its Beacon Point campus in Nueces County with a combined base-term value of $19.6B, reaching $50.2B if all renewals are exercised. The Financial Times identified NVIDIA as anchor tenant; Reuters couldn't independently verify, and NVIDIA hasn't confirmed. Beacon Point has secured one gigawatt of utility capacity through an interconnection agreement with AEP Texas, built around NVIDIA's DSX design across two 352 MW phases.

If confirmed, NVIDIA shifts from GPU supplier to infrastructure financier, with investment-grade credit making the campus bankable. That vertical integration is exactly the mature-project profile the state audit now rewards.

Bottom line: watch AEP Texas interconnection congestion and ERCOT queue position for follow-on Beacon Point capacity, and note this deal already carries the financing and site control the audit demands.

Samsung Heavy Industries signed an engineering agreement with Texas-based Mousterian Corporation for moored floating units rated at 50 MW of critical IT capacity each, targeting Texas and other U.S. markets with commercialization in Q2 2028. The pitch is mechanical: units deploy alongside existing baseload power and use surrounding water for non-evaporative heat rejection that needs no potable water, a direct answer to Texas siting economics where water demand is reshaping approvals.

With Abbott's audit now requiring water source and cooling disclosure, no-potable-water designs move from novelty to filing advantage.

Bottom line: Texas developers facing land and potable-water scarcity now have a documented cooling answer to put in front of PUCT reviewers, though whether floating capacity scales commercially is still open.

The proposed Circle T campus, a 3.83-million-square-foot project on 87.96 acres in Westlake, sits entirely within Westlake city limits but would put buildings as close as 506 feet from Keller homes. Keller Mayor Ross McMullin acknowledged Keller has no authority to stop a project inside Westlake's boundaries; its role is advocacy on setbacks and noise. Westlake says it briefed former Keller Mayor Armin Mizani and the city manager in December 2024, and that subsequent Keller officials didn't pass that intelligence to constituents.

The setback objections surfaced at permitting, too late to redesign.

Bottom line: cross-municipal projects need documented alignment with neighboring jurisdictions at the earliest stage, because when it breaks between administrations, proximity politics arrives at the zoning hearing.

Green Recursive Utility Service filed with the PUCT on August 3 (Control No. 59727, Item 4) asking the Commission to adopt a standard measurement unit for large computational loads, arguing that ERCOT is tracking more than 438 GW of large-load requests with no standardized way to meter, register, or report them. GRUS does not request adoption of its commercial rate; the petition is narrowly about measurement and framework.

The timing lands as the state audit demands project-level power and water figures the current toolkit struggles to verify uniformly.

Bottom line: the PUCT's response signals whether Texas regulates computational load as a distinct demand category, which would reshape how transmission and generation get allocated to datacenters over the next 24 months.

DOE's Office of Energy Dominance Financing closed a $3.26B loan to AEP Texas on July 8 for roughly 100 transmission projects spanning 2,800 miles, work DOE says will double carrying capacity on upgraded lines and connect new baseload to datacenter, manufacturing, and Permian demand. The office now controls more than $289B in loan authority and is deploying it toward baseload, transmission, and nuclear, having cut about $9.5B in prior wind and solar commitments.

For developers, the federal read-through is plain: transmission capacity to serve Texas load is getting funded even as the state pauses queue approvals.

Bottom line: equipment manufacturers and developers can see where federal capital concentrates, and Texas transmission is squarely in it, but that build still depends on which loads survive the audit.