Wednesday, September 2, 2026

Fermi Cleared 6 GW Air in 205 Days; Denied ROW Still Cuts Jupiter's 2.45 GW

0.63 miles of denied ROW still blocks OpenAI's 2.45 GW and the $65B gas gap after Fermi's 6 GW air clearance in 205 days. California's 330 MW full EIR and Batch Zero slips past April 2027 favor developers who've locked land, water disclosure, and firm offtake first.

Today's Lead

The $65 billion 2027 gap on behind-the-meter gas is a state permitting problem FERC can't touch. Fermi America took a final TCEQ air permit for its 6 GW Amarillo plant in 205 days; Energy Transfer's Green Chile lateral is still blocked on 0.63 miles of New Mexico State Trust land after State Land Commissioner Stephanie Garcia Richard denied the ROW, cutting gas for up to 2.45 GW tied to OpenAI and Oracle's Project Jupiter. FERC's June 18 Section 206 show-cause orders push RTO large-load tariff fixes by August 17, and none of them move EPA air, state land offices, or intrastate pipe.

[1]·[2]

NATIONAL CONTEXT

California Superior Court Judge L. Brooks Anderholt ordered Imperial County to finish a full EIR before any grading or construction on Imperial Valley Computer Manufacturing's 330 MW, 950,000-square-foot campus. The county had split grading, lot merger, and road vacation into ministerial acts under a 2017 negative declaration that never covered the substation, 862 MWh BESS, 132 gas generators, or cooling plant; serial approvals are now treated as one discretionary project.

New York has paused certain hyperscale permits pending ratepayer and grid protections. Wisconsin extended its very-large-customer tariff to a 15-year minimum and lowered eligibility to 100 MW. Peculiar, Missouri's Board of Aldermen unanimously rejected Diode Ventures' 500-acre campus, and Festus voters removed most pro-project council members. Old zoning baselines and thin local process now price delays in quarters; capital still favors markets where air, land, and interconnection are sequenced up front.

[3]·[2]·[4]

Power

UPDATE: Verification Gate Keeps Compressing Batch Zero

WilmerHale maps the live effects of Governor Greg Abbott's August 3 directive: ERCOT postponed large-load classifications due August 7, slipped Batch Zero results past April 9, 2027, and paused energization for data centers and crypto loads above 75 MW. Texas Public Utility Commission Chairman Thomas Gleeson put the planning risk plainly: when demand isn't real, the state can't sequence generation or transmission; large-user requests in Texas jumped from 48 GW in 2023 to over 474 GW.

Collateral works. Exelon cut high-probability data center demand about 40% to 11 GW after stricter deposits; AEP Ohio's pipeline fell more than half after study fees up to $100,000. Bottom line: firm offtake and posted capital clear the filter; speculative queue slots keep paying carrying cost while verification runs for months.

[5]·[6]·[7]

Grid

NEW: AmpZ Lufkin and Rule 25.521 Hit the PUCT Record

Mike Jackson's filing under PUCT Control No. 58317 Item 67 contests AmpZ's proposed 2.1 GW Lufkin campus on a former Angelina County paper mill. He calls the 55 MW to 175 MW to full-build path a sequencing play that locks local buy-in before true scale appears, names Longleaf gas as required support, and notes a 10% efficiency gain still leaves 1.89 GW of load.

Separately, Fedor Mikheev of the Texas A&M University Energy Institute filed Control No. 58482 Item 35 on proposed 16 TAC § 25.521 (large-load demand response pay, eligibility, lead time, aggregation). His Baytown-La Porte baseline is about 879 MW average (7.7 TWh/yr), with coordinated flexibility valued at a median $91M per year across 10,000 trials. Bottom line: efficiency, phasing, and DR reservation prices now draw technical counter-analysis on the record; interconnection studies and curtailment cost work product need to be ready before the next filing wave.

[8]·[9]·[10]

Water

Cooling Design Is Now a Power and Disclosure Decision

Rystad Energy puts global datacenter water use between 388 billion and 644 billion liters by 2030, up from 222 billion in 2025, with the spread set by rack-level liquid and dry cooling chosen now. Dry cooling saves roughly 2.15 L per kWh of IT load and adds 0.30 to 0.74 kWh of electricity; U.S. indirect water in generation can run more than 2x on-site use.

Bastrop County still drew 100-plus residents against a project that already cleared closed-loop and on-site generation bars experts call reasonable; Texans United Against Data Centers reached 43,000 members in three months. Margaret Cook of the Houston Advanced Research Center says closed-loop plus air chillers can cut daily draw from millions of gallons to a fraction, yet most operators skipped Texas's water-use survey, so counties still lack a cumulative baseline. OpenAI's Effingham, Georgia site remains unlocked on final loops; County Manager Tim Callanan puts initial fill near 25 million gallons across four buildings inside a Floridan red zone that bars new aquifer withdrawals. Bottom line: lock WUE, non-potable supply, and public gallon tables at site select, or carry schedule risk when the first town hall treats silence as the answer.

[11]·[12]·[13]

Politics

NEW: Technical Compliance Doesn't Buy Trust in Bastrop

Bastrop's fight split into a solvable engineering problem and a political one. Residents called out a Highway 71 firefighter billboard on tax support for salaries after Texas A&M data showed most regional firefighters are volunteers, and developers pulled tax-abatement asks hours before the town hall. Natalie Aboudaoud labeled it propaganda; Jeanette Shelton said the sponsors underestimated the county.

The pattern matches Midwest municipal blocks already in motion and the broader surface WilmerHale flags around grid bills, water, incentives, and foreign bulk-power gear under the August 26 presidential order. Bottom line: verifiable water and cost shares, plus local sign-off on cooling standards, have to precede marketing, or the next hearing burns quarters no interconnection study can buy back.

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Sources we cited

14 articles across 12 publishers · 1001 reviewed today

[1]avanzaenergy.substack.com
The $65 Billion Permitting Chokepoint: Why FERC Reform Can't Save BTM Gas
Sep 1, 2026·On February 25, 2026, Fermi America received a final air permit from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) for 6 gigawatts (G…
[2]POWER Magazine
Make Every Data Center a Power Hub
Sep 1, 2026·America is debating data centers as though technological leadership and affordable electricity are competing goals. That framing misses the …
[3]Datacenter Knowledge
California Judge Orders Full Environmental Review of 330 MW Data Center
Sep 1, 2026·A California judge says Imperial County must review a proposed 330 MW data center and its power, water, battery, and generation infrastructu…
[4]KCUR
Data center backlash unites some Missouri and Kansas towns against lawmakers and big tech
Sep 2, 2026·The residents of Peculiar, Missouri, celebrated their victory against a proposed data center on an October night in 2024, after the town’s s…
[5]WilmerHale
Texas Demonstrates Expanded Risks for Data Center Developers
Sep 1, 2026·Recent Directive from Governor Abbott On August 3, 2026, Texas Governor Greg Abbott issued a directive requiring an audit and verification …
[6]CNA
Analysis:Texas' halt on powering data centers reflects US reckoning over 'ghost' demand
Sep 1, 2026·FILE PHOTO: The steel frame of data centers under construction during a tour of the OpenAI data center in Abilene, Texas, U.S., September 23…
[7]Yahoo Finance
Analysis-Texas' halt on powering data centers reflects US reckoning over 'ghost' demand
Sep 1, 2026·Sept 1 (Reuters) - Data centers have requested roughly as much electricity across the middle swath of the United States as it takes to power…
[8]PUCT Interchange Filings
PUCT Control No. 58317 Item 67: Analysis of the AmpZ Lufkin Project
Sep 1, 2026·Filed with the Public Utility Commission of Texas on 2026-09-01. Control Number: 58317 Item Number: 67 Item Type: PC Utility Type: O Filing …
[9]PUCT Interchange Filings
PUCT Control No. 58482 Item 35: Comments of Fedor Mikheev on proposed § 25.521 addressing payment structure, eligibility, procurement lead time, aggregation.
Aug 31, 2026·Filed with the Public Utility Commission of Texas on 2026-08-31. Control Number: 58482 Item Number: 35 Item Type: COM Utility Type: E Filing…
[10]POWER Magazine
POWER Digest [September 2026]
Sep 1, 2026·News briefs curated by POWER’s editors for September 2026, covering notable developments in data centers, gas turbines, nuclear, renewables,…
[11]Crude Oil Prices Today | OilPrice.com
The AI Boom Could Triple Data Center Water Use by 2030
Aug 28, 2026·Click Here for 150+ Global Oil Prices Click Here for 150+ Global Oil Prices Click Here for 150+ Global Oil Prices Click Here for 150+ Glo…
[12]KUT
How data centers can be built more sustainably and become better neighbors
Sep 2, 2026·On the surface, a recently proposed data center in Bastrop County is planning to do everything right. The developer isn't requesting an out…
[13]thecurrentga.org
How much water will Effingham’s OpenAI data center need? A lot – but not on site.
Sep 1, 2026·When Effingham County announced plans for a massive OpenAI data center last month, area residents immediately questioned where it would get …
[14]Energy Connects
Data Centers, Reviled in the US, Win Support in Brazil’s Presidential Election
Sep 1, 2026·(Bloomberg) -- Data centers have become politically toxic in the US midterm campaign. Not in Brazil’s presidential race. Ahead of the count…

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