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Texas vote rattles data center developers' nerves

  • Märkte: Electricity, Natural gas
  • 12.11.26

At a gathering of natural gas suppliers and data center developers Thursday in Austin, Texas, the question on everyone's mind was what last week's blue sweep of the state's top offices means for their projects.

"I don't think anybody foresaw the extent of the outcome that we experienced," Brandon Seale, senior adviser at VoltaGrid, said while moderating a panel at the LDC NatGas to Power Forum. "We're used to dealing with different administrations, different states, different jurisdictions. But it feels like something changed last week."

Voters elected candidates who campaigned on reining in data centers. But, as many noted, the public backlash had already become so pronounced that it was outgoing Republican governor Greg Abbott who first caught the industry off guard: in August, with a pause on new approvals for data centers seeking a connection to the state's grid and then in September with a sweeping freeze on permits for data center projects.

Trenton Thornock, founder of Prometheus Hyperscale, said his company had assumed it was shielded from efforts to slow down some development because its projects make their own power on site from natural gas, with no grid connection, and did not expect to find itself caught in the dragnet.

"What surprised us is the way that Governor Abbott directed the TCEQ [the state environmental regulator]," Thornock said. "Now you can't get a wastewater permit, can't get an air permit. Even if you were planning on using fuel cells, that's a big question mark. So we were really surprised."

His Texas projects now have "a big question mark" hanging over them, he said, while the value of his Wyoming site "went way up last week, just by creating scarcity in Texas, which is the biggest market."

Peter Belmonte, principal at Stallion Energy & Environmental, said projects already under way have momentum. "This freight train is going 100 miles an hour," he said. "It's going to be hard to derail things that are already on the books, even with the moratoriums." But if Texas shuts the door, "people will go to Wyoming, they'll go to Louisiana, they'll go to Oklahoma," he said.

Many in the industry have acknowledged that things were moving too fast. "There was already a pause on new permitting, and I think it was needed," said Coby Washburn, vice president of business development at Woodway Energy Infrastructure. "It's been kind of a bit of a wild west."

Still, most of the panelists said they plan to wait and see how things shake out, betting that demand is not going away and that Texas' competitive advantages are hard to beat.

Few places can match Texas for land, gas, renewables, pipelines and support for growth, said Dilanka Seimon, chief commercial officer at gas producer and power generator BKV.

"It's never a good idea to bet against Texas," he said, "and I wouldn't start now."


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