Texas Continued Permitting Data Centers After Greg Abbott Ordered a Pause

Regulators in Texas did not stop processing permits for data center projects when Gov. Greg Abbott ordered a pause last month, according to an analysis of public records released Monday by the oil and gas watchdog group FracTracker.

Amid an upswell of public opposition to the booming buildout of digital infrastructure in Texas, Abbott directed the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality in a Sept. 21 letter “to halt all permits sought by data centers.”

But FracTracker, in collaboration with Public Citizen, identified 35 permitting actions taken by the TCEQ for data center projects in subsequent weeks.

“TCEQ has continued reviewing applications and issuing approvals that allow data center development to proceed,” the groups said in a press release Monday. “These actions do not signal an agency trying to pause.”

In response, Abbott Press Secretary Andrew Mahaleris indicated that the pause applied to approval, not processing, of permits.

“No permits have been approved,” Mahaleris said in a statement. “In line with the Governor’s directive, TCEQ has not taken and will not take any proactive actions related to the approval of data center permits.”

Abbott has described his moratorium as an opportunity for state agencies to evaluate the facilities’ impact on water resources and grid stability.

“No other state agency shall move forward with regulatory approvals related to data centers until this information is acquired,” Abbott wrote in his Sept. 21 letter to TCEQ executive director Kelly Keel.

TCEQ responded to Abbott in an Oct. 19 letter, which was provided to Inside Climate News by Ryan Vise, TCEQ’s director of external relations.

In the letter, Steven Schar, TCEQ’s interim executive director, wrote: “TCEQ staff are screening pending permit applications to determine if they are subject to the directive. If a permit application is subject to the directive, TCEQ has paused that permit application.”

Since the Sept. 21 directive, the TCEQ has fast-tracked or assigned engineers to 14 permits, approved stormwater coverage for 11, certified emissions estimates for seven and issued public notice for three, according to permitting documents collected by FracTracker and Public Citizen.

The permits regard construction of gas power generation facilities for energy-hungry facilities. All of the largest gas power projects currently proposed in Texas are specifically intended to serve data centers, which are primarily planned to run artificial intelligence.

The projects would release tens of thousands of tons of regulated pollutants, according to permitting documents, as well as more than 100 million tons per year of greenhouse gases — an enormous amount roughly equal to the annual emissions of a mid-sized industrialized country.

The day after Abbott’s pause on data center permits, on Sept. 22, FracTracker and Public Citizen found that TCEQ mailed notices of preliminary approval to three major projects: NRG Prairie Energy Center, VoltaGrid’s ABI-1 power plant and Nexus’s self-powered data center in Hubbard.

The agency opened public comment periods on two of those projects in following days.

FracTracker and Public Citizen found approvals of stormwater management permits for data center construction issued after Sept. 21, including for Caldwell Valley Technology Park in Caldwell County, Crusoe’s Abilene campus and EdgeConneX’s Cedar Creek campus.

The report identified numerous other projects that continue to advance through permitting. For example, records show the TCEQ received a permit application for generators at Edged Energy in Dallas on Oct. 6, and an engineer completed an initial review on Oct. 9.

“Our research uncovered glaring inconsistencies between regulatory actions and Governor Abbott’s directives,” said Sam Law, manager of communications at FracTracker Alliance and author of the report. “We need an actual pause to study the threats posed to the land, water and livelihoods of Texans.”