El Paso, TX

July 6, 2026

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The April Deadline Beats the Rulebook by Three Years

El Paso Electric's proposed $500 million plant for Meta's 1 GW, 11-building complex faces objections at the PUCT from the City of El Paso, the Texas Office of Public Utility Counsel, and Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid.

July 5, 2026

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Self-Supply Is Now the Floor for Political Viability in Texas

Developers who've already secured unincorporated parcels with documented water offsets and dedicated generation hold an edge, but the retroactivity question hangs over projects like Meta's expanding El Paso complex, now 11 buildings and $10 billion, where El Paso Electric's $500 million plant faces PUCT intervention from the City of El Paso, the Office of Public Utility Counsel, and Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid.

June 22, 2026

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ERCOT Studies Big Loads in Batches Now. The Queue Math Just Changed.

Meta's planned water-positive facility near El Paso turns a scarcity constraint into an approval advantage, and Microsoft's shift to air cooling in San Antonio addresses water stress without killing economics.

June 20, 2026

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Behind-the-Meter Buys a Speed Premium: Why Google Runs Its Own Power

In El Paso, roughly 180 speakers delivered eight hours of comment against Meta's facility, and the council voted 5-3 to reject a proposal clawing back the 2023 tax breaks.

June 10, 2026

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418 GW Knock on Texas Doors. Behind-the-Meter Builders Skip the Line.

Meta's $10 billion El Paso campus is the template: closed-loop liquid cooling, a 200% restoration pledge funding 177 million gallons annually through farmer irrigation upgrades, pecan micro-irrigation, and DigDeep colonia partnerships, plus an El Paso Electric agreement absorbing all serving costs.

June 7, 2026

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Permits Hit a 49-Year High as 70% Push Back. Texas Tightens Instead.

El Paso released a draft Data Center Policy Framework, the first meaningful Texas municipal signal that local oversight is coming even in a development-forward state.

June 6, 2026

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Meitner Is the Template. 430 GW of Applications Are About to Find Out.

Meta's $800 million El Paso campus will draw up to 2.5 million gallons daily, equivalent to 12,375 homes, and the El Paso City Council voted unanimously May 26 to end large datacenter incentive programs while a 33-page policy framework moves through public comment closing June 9.

June 3, 2026

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Sequencing Beats Ambition: Power, Water, and Politics Each Bind Separately

Risk: developers who specify cooling vendor before land acquisition compress permitting timelines. The ones who treat water as a downstream problem in West Texas, El Paso, or the Permian will find their applications stuck while the engineering-first projects move dirt.

June 1, 2026

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Tax Abatements Lose the Room. Power, Water, and Cost Causation Take Over.

El Paso just became the cleanest signal yet that the tax-incentive-only playbook is finished.

May 31, 2026

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Hill County Moratorium Heads to Federal Court. Every Texas County Is Watching.

Meta's El Paso facility will run on more than 800 mobile mini-turbines.

May 27, 2026

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The 445 GW Queue Gets a Gate. Capital Commitment Is the New Credential.

El Paso adopted a policy direction barring future data center incentives absent a council reversal, after 800-plus participants weighed in and despite the 2023 Meta Chapter 380 rebate generating projected revenue above $1 billion.

May 2, 2026

It would consume more power than El Paso Electric's entire 460,000-customer system, with combined-cycle gas turbines as the "most likely" power source per Assistant Secretary Jeff Waksman.

May 1, 2026

The scale eclipses El Paso Electric's entire 2.9 GW system and lands alongside Meta's $10 billion Northeast El Paso build and the Oracle/OpenAI $165 billion Project Jupiter campus across the New Mexico line.

April 30, 2026

A 350 MW datacenter outside El Paso is running on roughly 800 small generators because larger units weren't available in the construction window.

April 23, 2026

El Paso learned Meta's Wurldwide LLC deal included 35 years of tax abatements only after the fact, with NDAs sealing key terms.

April 21, 2026

CBRE's Chris Herrmann says gas pipeline proximity flipped from dealbreaker to prerequisite in Dallas site selection, and Meta's $10B El Paso campus is funding a $473 million, 366 MW El Paso Electric gas plant at McCloud to self-supply.

April 20, 2026

Crusoe's 29-unit GE Vernova aeroderivative order (nearly 1 GW), Meta's 366 MW behind-the-meter build at El Paso, and xAI's 1.2 GW Mississippi turbine approval show hyperscalers are no longer waiting on interconnection queues.

April 12, 2026

Meta's $10 billion El Paso expansion specifies closed-loop cooling to minimize consumption in arid West Texas.

April 9, 2026

Community opposition is coalescing in coordinated fashion: a San Antonio convening called "Texas Data Center Rebellion" brought organizers from El Paso, Taylor, Amarillo, San Antonio, and DFW.

April 6, 2026

Google's $40 billion investment across Armstrong and Haskell counties and Meta's $10 billion facility near El Paso are drawing scrutiny from farmers, rural landowners, and residents worried about rates, water, and land displacement.

April 4, 2026

In Texas, El Paso Electric abandoned solar plans and is building a natural gas plant within one year to serve Meta's $10 billion campus, compressing what normally takes years.

April 2, 2026

Microsoft signed with Crusoe Energy for a 900 MW AI factory campus in Abilene, joining a regional build-out that now includes Meta's $10 billion El Paso expansion, the Stargate venture's 1.2 GW second phase, and Stream Data Centers' gigawatt-scale partnership with New Era Energy in Ector County.

March 31, 2026

Amazon filed plans for three San Antonio facilities totaling over 370,000 square feet and $65 million, while Meta boosted its El Paso commitment to $10 billion targeting 1 GW by 2028.

March 30, 2026

Meta's El Paso project expansion from $1.5 billion to $10 billion is triggering real political consequences.

March 29, 2026

The move, combined with Meta's $10 billion El Paso expansion and Google's $5 billion-plus Anthropic-linked campus already under construction elsewhere in the state, confirms Texas as the epicenter of hyperscale AI infrastructure buildout.

March 28, 2026

Meta scaled its El Paso commitment sixfold to $10 billion and 1 GW.

March 27, 2026

Meta's $10 billion El Paso data center expansion is the day's biggest story, sixfolding the original $1.5 billion commitment to build an 11-building, 1-gigawatt complex across 1,000 acres in Northeast El Paso.

March 14, 2026

OpenAI's Project Stargate with Oracle and SoftBank includes gas generation in Texas, and Meta's 366 MW utility gas plant in El Paso adds to the state's exposure.

February 24, 2026

Water fights stretching from Hood County to El Paso.

February 23, 2026

Meta is deploying 813 modular natural gas generators totaling 366MW of behind-the-meter power to fuel a 1GW data center under construction in El Paso, Texas, at a $473 million capital cost, bypassing grid connection entirely and drawing unanimous opposition from El Paso City Council and local community groups.

February 18, 2026

Meta's El Paso facility will run on 800-plus mobile mini-turbines.

February 15, 2026

In Santa Teresa, NM, Stack Infrastructure disclosed for the first time that its $165 billion Project Jupiter would use 20,000 gallons per day via closed-loop cooling, a fraction of the 750,000 gallons daily planned for Meta's El Paso facility.

February 11, 2026

El Paso faces community opposition to a gas plant purpose-built for datacenter load.

February 10, 2026

Simultaneously, Round Rock officials are weighing "neighborhood compatibility" for a Skybox datacenter, Fort Worth approved the first step on a $2.1 billion project, El Paso's gas-plant-for-datacenter plan is drawing opposition, and Genesee County, Michigan is voting on a one-year moratorium.