Governor Greg Abbott announced that data center companies Skybox, Digital Realty, and Mara will comply with the standards and guidelines he established for data center development in Texas, according to an Aug. 7 press release from the governor’s office.
“I established clear guardrails to ensure data centers protect our electric grid, conserve our water, respect our neighborhoods, and pay their own way,” Abbott said in the release. “They must not pass costs on to Texas families or interfere with their quality of life.”
Earlier this summer, the governor directed the Public Utility Commission of Texas and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas to ensure data centers pay for their electric infrastructure instead of shifting costs onto Texas families and small businesses, reuse their own water, reduce the cost of electricity for Texans, avoid disrupting residential neighborhoods, and pay their own way without relying on what the release called outdated taxpayer-funded incentives.
Under the review process, the PUCT and ERCOT will examine each data center project’s disclosures, including any taxpayer-funded incentives or abatements, projected electricity demand and plans for on-site generation, water sources and reuse procedures, measures to reduce impacts on neighbors such as noise mitigation and setbacks, and full transparency about project ownership, according to the release. The two grid agencies must receive and audit that information before projects can move forward. “The PUCT and ERCOT cannot make decisions to guarantee grid stability and reliability based on substantially incomplete information,” Abbott said. Companies that fail to comply with ERCOT’s audit process are subject to having their approval denied, the governor’s office said.
The three companies join a growing list of responses to the directives. Diode announced it failed to meet the standards and will not pursue a proposed data center in Henderson County, while Amazon, Google, and QTS have each committed to work with the state and embrace the governor’s standards, according to the release.