Texas Built the Boom Now Comes the $33 Billion Reckoning

Texas opened the week announcing the largest single generation project ever aimed at data center load and closed it with its legislature preparing to audit every incentive, water right, and transmission dollar attached to the boom. That arc, from NextEra's Monday supply announcement through Wednesday's community friction in Grimes County to Friday's legislative reckoning, is the week's real story, and it's the most-read arc we've tracked this cycle.

Power: The Build-It-Yourself Era Takes Hold

The supply picture is staggering in scale and increasingly off-grid by design. Project Anderson in Anderson County anchors a 5.2 GW, $16 billion commitment structured as a U.S.-Japan joint venture, the largest single generation announcement yet aimed at ERCOT data center load. In El Paso, Meta sixfolded its original commitment to $10 billion and 1 GW, with El Paso Electric building a dedicated 366 MW, $500 million gas plant paid entirely by Meta. Crusoe Energy is expanding its Abilene campus to 2.1 GW, anchored by a 900 MW Microsoft facility with behind-the-meter generation and battery storage.

The Tuesday transmission fight explains why developers aren't waiting for the grid. A $14 billion ERCOT transmission project faces conservative opposition, with a second Houston-area phase that'd push ratepayer exposure to roughly $33 billion. So developers are building private power islands first and planning ERCOT integration for 2030 and beyond. By end of 2025, 39% of new U.S. gas capacity under development was designed for on-site data center use, up from 5% a year earlier. Siemens Energy board member Karim Amin confirmed gas turbines ordered today won't arrive until 2030, which means developers who didn't lock supply early, as Crusoe did two years ago, are already behind.

The Thursday drone-strike story added a dimension most developers haven't priced in: gigawatt campuses are now direct military targets, and the power dependency is the attack surface.

Water: Binding Commitments Replace Pledges

Water moved from secondary concern to active deal term this week. Taylor City Council conditioned KDC's $2.5 billion campus approval on a closed-loop system capped at 5 million gallons per building, with refills requiring city manager sign-off. Meta's El Paso facility projects consumption "comparable to a regional golf course." George Mason University published the first peer-reviewed study linking data center water consumption to public health risks, giving regulators academic cover for stricter permitting. The Texas Legislature, per Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick's directive, has flagged water consumption as a formal investigation priority alongside tax exemptions that've grown from $14.6 million in 2014-15 to a projected $3.3 billion for 2028-29.

It's not theoretical anymore. Developers without measurable, binding water commitments will face the sharpest legislative scrutiny this session.

Politics: Opposition Isn't Local Anymore

The Friday El Paso story showed how fast organized resistance reaches federal level: U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar sent Meta a formal letter demanding energy sourcing and water transparency within days of the announcement. In Fort Worth, the 2871 Community Coalition is pressing Edged Data Centers for independent noise studies and water disclosure ahead of a March 31 City Council tax abatement vote. Fermi America's TCEQ permit for its 11 GW, 6,000-acre Project Matador near Amarillo cleared despite more than 300 opposing public comments, but social license didn't clear with it. In Grimes County, where Geronimo Power's proposal landed in a county with no binding land-use plan, every decision becomes a political fight from scratch.

The pattern is consistent: opposition isn't staying local. Michigan Sen. Mallory McMorrow's seven-point framework, Sens. Warren and Hawley's federal reporting push, and the Trump administration's DOJ AI Litigation Task Force are squeezing from both ends. Developers who don't bring transparent benefit-sharing, quantified water plans, and proactive community engagement will get caught between federal preemption pressure above and organized county-level resistance below.

What to Watch

• •March 31 Fort Worth vote: City Council's tax abatement decision on Edged Data Centers at Veale Ranch is the week's most immediate test of whether benefit-sharing packages can move faster than organized opposition.
• •Terafab site selection: Elon Musk's $20-25 billion Austin campus announcement carries no confirmed location. Watch for PUC of Texas or ERCOT filings that signal which Texas corridor absorbs those infrastructure demands.
• •Texas legislative hearings: Lt. Gov. Patrick's directive to evaluate sales tax exemptions, water consumption, and transmission rules is now a formal process. The first committee hearings will reveal whether this is accountability theater or a genuine policy pivot.
• •X-energy NRC timeline: Amazon-backed X-energy's Xe-100 reactor at Dow Chemical's Seadrift site is under active NRC review. Any schedule signal from the agency will tell the market whether firm nuclear baseload arrives before gas plants lock up the long-term contracts.