On Monday, the governor ordered the Public Utility Commission of Texas and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas to audit all data centers wanting to connect to the state’s power grid.
Amid growing public backlash to the rapid buildout of data centers across Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott on Monday announced a moratorium on the approval of data centers until regulatory agencies can audit proposed data centers seeking connection to the state’s electric grid.
It is unclear how long the audit will take, but the effort is Abbott’s strongest effort yet to slow the development of these data centers statewide and underscores how little information members of the public, including state leaders, know about the facilities.
Abbott is asking the Public Utility Commission of Texas and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas to ensure data center developers provide information on tax breaks they will receive; power use and generation; water use and cooling operations; efforts to reduce impacts on local communities; and ownership of the facility. Any projects that fail Abbott’s ordered “comprehensive verification and audit” should be denied connection to the grid, the governor said.
“Our top priority is to protect Texans’ safety and quality of life,” Abbott wrote in a statement. “Any project that fails to comply with the requirements set forth by the PUCT and ERCOT, and by state law, must be denied connection to the Texas grid. Simply put, Texans must come first.”
Abbott’s letter to the PUCT and ERCOT directs them to conduct the audit on all data centers advancing through ERCOT’s interconnection queue, or the line for energy intensive projects seeking connection to the electric grid. ERCOT is currently tracking more than 1,800 projects in the queue, representing over 474 gigawatts of electricity, or more than five times the grid’s record for peak demand, according to ERCOT. Approximately 90% of the new power requests are data centers, Abbott said.
ERCOT and the PUCT are already conducting a review of some of the projects in the queue through a process known as “batch zero.” It is unclear if Abbott wants agencies to audit those projects or all those currently in the queue. Following Abbott’s directive, ERCOT said Monday they are putting the batch zero review on pause.
There is no state or federal government database of the facilities, but the Texas Tribune has identified at least 335 data centers operating in Texas. The state is currently the second largest market for the facilities in the country, behind Virginia, and is poised to take the top spot. The Tribune has identified at least 248 planned data centers coming to the state, although hundreds more in lesser development phases have lined up in the power queue.
While Abbott’s directive pauses the approval of new data centers seeking connection to the ERCOT grid, some data centers are building on-site power generation that allows them to bypass traditional connection to the grid. The ERCOT region also does not include the entirety of the state, like El Paso, which has seen the development of several large data centers.
The Data Center Coalition, a trade group that represents some of the nation’s largest tech companies, said it was hopeful Abbott’s directive could separate responsible developers from irresponsible ones and urged regulators to quickly conduct the audits.
“Done correctly, this review can showcase the good actors in the data center industry rather than delaying them unnecessarily, ensuring Texas will continue to be the national leader in economic development,” the organization’s spokesman Dan Diorio wrote in a statement Monday.
Source: , The Texas Tribune
Photo Credit: Signs are scattered on the ground at a rally against data center development across the state on the Capitol grounds in Austin on July 27, 2026. Kaylee Greenlee for The Texas Tribune
The Texas Tribune is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
