Texans for Responsible Infrastructure Investment announced that three local economic development organizations — the Copperas Cove Economic Development Corporation, Forward Wichita Falls and the Sherman Economic Development Corporation — have joined the statewide coalition advocating for major electric transmission investments, according to a July 14 news release.
Texas utility regulators have two days to answer the governor.
As the Public Utility Commission of Texas approaches a cluster of routing decisions on the state's first 765-kilovolt transmission lines, the fight increasingly turns on a single question: whether the demand forecast for West Texas — driven largely by oil-and-gas electrification in the Permian Basin and, increasingly, by data centers — justifies stringing ultra-high-voltage lines across ranchland.
The numbers sound almost implausible: more than 400 gigawatts of prospective new electricity users are asking to connect to the Texas grid — roughly four times the state's all-time current demand — and the vast majority are data centers.
Texas has overtaken California to become the nation's top producer of utility-scale solar power, capping a 25-year climb from a single darkened array in Austin to nearly one-fifth of all U.
Texas' effort to control who pays for the power that data centers demand reaches two hard markers this month.
The Texas Oil & Gas Association published its June 2026 Month in Review on July 1, recapping a month of advocacy on behalf of the Texas oil and natural gas industry.
The southernmost leg of Texas's Permian Basin Reliability Plan — the Howard–Solstice 765-kilovolt line proposed by CPS Energy and AEP Texas — has moved into its proposal-for-decision phase, leaving landowners, conservation groups and the utilities to await an administrative law judge's route recommendation.
One of the largest single data-center projects yet planned in Texas is approaching an operational milestone in a rural county west of Fort Worth.