Something strange is happening in Texas. People on the left and the right, who seem incapable of agreeing on almost anything, are beginning to agree about data centers.
They do not want their water consumed by them. They do not want their electric bills driven higher by them. Rural Texans do not want family farms and ranches carved apart by massive transmission lines to provide electricity for them.
I have spoken with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle who are hearing the same thing from their constituents. So I keep coming back to a simple question: If so many Texans do not want this, who does?
To understand how we got here, you have to go back to Winter Storm Uri in 2021.
Texans froze. The electric grid failed spectacularly. People died. Pipes burst. Businesses closed. We demanded that the state make sure it never happened again.
The Legislature responded with reforms intended to strengthen the grid and allow Texas to plan ahead for future electricity demand. In 2021, Senate Bill 1281 required the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, better known as ERCOT, which operates most of the state’s electric grid, to assess reliability under extreme weather conditions and required regulators to consider forecast growth and additional loads seeking connection to the grid when evaluating certain transmission projects.
Then, in 2023, House Bill 5066 pushed Texas further toward proactive transmission planning in areas experiencing rapid electrical load growth. The idea was understandable. A growing state should not wait until its electrical system is overwhelmed before building infrastructure.
Five years after Snowmageddon, however, the scale of the demand Texas is preparing for has changed beyond recognition.
This summer, ERCOT reported that it was tracking hundreds of gigawatts of proposed large electrical loads. By August, approximately 474 gigawatts of proposed demand were reportedly under review, with roughly 90 percent associated with data centers.
To put that number in perspective, that proposed demand is more than five times the record peak electricity demand of the entire state of Texas.
Of course, not all of those projects will be built. A request to connect to the grid is not a completed data center, and we should not pretend otherwise. But they do not all have to be built for the consequences to be enormous.
Texas is not talking about plugging a few more businesses into the electrical system. We are confronting proposed industrial electricity consumption on a scale that is difficult to comprehend, and somebody has to build the infrastructure to deliver that electricity.
That is where the enormous new transmission lines enter the story. The proposed 765-kilovolt lines are part of a historic expansion of the Texas transmission system. They are not exclusively data center lines. Texas is growing. Oil and gas operations are electrifying. New generation needs transmission. Existing Texans need a reliable grid.
But massive new industrial loads are increasingly part of the demand driving transmission planning. Texans deserve to know how much of what is being built is necessary to make the grid more reliable for the people already here, and how much is necessary to accommodate extraordinary new industrial demand.
I operate a ranch, restaurant, and hospitality business in the Texas Hill Country. My electric bill is already around $6,000 a month. Granted, we are not an average household. We have a restaurant, walk-in refrigeration, houses, and significant farm infrastructure. But $6,000 a month is $72,000 a year. If my electricity costs rise 20 percent, that is another $14,400 annually. If they double, that is another $72,000.
For businesses like mine, electricity prices are not an abstract debate before the Public Utility Commission. They can determine whether a business survives.
Then there is the cost that never appears on an electric bill: land.
This week I spoke with Lance Cashion, a pastor, rancher, and landowner in Erath County whose family property is being affected by proposed transmission infrastructure. Cashion testified before the Texas Senate Committee on Business and Commerce on July 29. His community is dealing with multiple projects simultaneously, including a separate 345-kilovolt Lone Star Transmission project.
For Cashion, this is intensely personal. A proposed roughly 20-acre facility called Wrangler Station could be built about 250 yards from his family’s home. His neighbor does not want the station on his property, and Cashion and other nearby landowners fear that eminent domain could ultimately be used to acquire the land for the project.
Even the notice process troubled him. The Lone Star Transmission letter announcing a July 29 public meeting was dated July 20 and postmarked July 21. Cashion says it did not arrive in his mailbox until July 25, leaving him just four days between receiving the notice and the meeting.
Cashion made a simple point to senators. These projects may be evaluated individually, but families experience them cumulatively. Multiple corridors, easements, and construction projects converge on the same roads, creeks, farms, and ranches.
He asked lawmakers to require consideration of those cumulative impacts and to give landowners 90 days’ notice before the public input phase.
“Because heard too late is not heard at all,” he said.
The opposition to what is happening is becoming increasingly difficult to categorize politically.
I recently spoke with Clayton Tucker, a Democrat running for Texas agriculture commissioner, for a separate article I am researching about the possible effects of data center infrastructure on livestock. Tucker has made standing against data centers and protecting Texas water central to his campaign. Interestingly, the proposed 765-kilovolt transmission build-out is also affecting his own family’s ranch.
Tucker said something during our conversation that perfectly describes what I think is happening. Traditional Republicans don’t see big business as a problem, he said, and traditional Democrats don’t see big government as a problem.
In my opinion, both are huge problems.
My own Republican state representative, Wes Virdell, has submitted multiple letters to the Public Utility Commission opposing aspects of the 765-kilovolt transmission buildout. He and other lawmakers have said they have heard from hundreds of constituents concerned about the projects.
His language about eminent domain has been unusually direct. In one letter to the Public Utility Commission, Virdell described using eminent domain for these lines as “a choice to use the power of the government to sidestep the free market and steal land from Texas citizens.” He called eminent domain an egregious act and argued that using government power this way ultimately destroys people’s confidence in a government meant to protect their rights.
The rancher who is worried about eminent domain may be conservative. The environmentalist who is worried about water consumption may be progressive. The small business owner who is worried about electricity prices may not care about either political party. Yet they are increasingly finding themselves on the same side of this issue.
On the other side are extraordinarily powerful economic and institutional interests: technology companies, data center developers, transmission utilities, industrial users, and economic development interests that have spent years trying to make Texas the most attractive place in America to build.
There is nothing inherently wrong with wanting businesses to come to Texas. Economic growth has been one of this state’s great successes. But there has to be a point at which we ask what that growth costs and who is paying for it.
These companies are asking for unprecedented amounts of electricity while also potentially qualifying for enormous tax incentives. Under Texas law, qualifying large data center projects can receive state and local sales tax exemptions on eligible purchases for 20 years.
If a private company buys land, builds a facility, and pays for the resources it consumes, that is one thing. If its electricity requirements necessitate billions of dollars of new infrastructure and transmission corridors across somebody else’s ranch, it is no longer simply a private transaction. Government becomes involved. Utilities become involved. Eminent domain becomes possible. The people absorbing the costs may never have agreed to the development in the first place.
Republicans traditionally fear big government because concentrated governmental power can overwhelm the individual. Democrats traditionally fear big business because concentrated corporate power can do much the same.
But what happens when big government and big business want the same thing?
The individual can become very small indeed.
Gov. Greg Abbott has now directed state regulators to scrutinize proposed data centers seeking connections to the ERCOT grid and has called for data centers to bear the infrastructure costs required to serve them rather than shifting those costs onto ordinary Texans. He has also proposed eliminating data center tax incentives and other reforms.
Some have praised him for taking action; others question why an issue of this magnitude is being left for the next regular legislative session. Abbott has so far failed to call a special session on data centers despite bipartisan calls for him to do so. His own directive says he plans to work with lawmakers “next session.”
Just last year, Abbott was willing to call two special legislative sessions, with redistricting among the issues on the agenda. If proposed new electrical demand is now more than five times the state’s record peak, with roughly 90 percent associated with data centers, it seems reasonable to ask why this issue cannot command similar urgency.
After Snowmageddon, Texans asked government to make our electric grid reliable. We did not ask for unlimited electricity at any cost for anyone who wanted to build here.
There is a difference between building transmission to keep Texans from freezing in their homes and using billions of dollars of new infrastructure and potentially eminent domain to provide some of the world’s wealthiest corporations with unprecedented amounts of electricity while simultaneously offering qualifying projects tax exemptions lasting as long as 20 years.
I am not arguing that Texas should never build another data center or transmission line. I certainly do not want to return to a grid incapable of surviving another severe winter storm.
I am asking something simpler.
Before we condemn ranchland, raise towers across family farms, commit billions of dollars to transmission infrastructure, and potentially expose ordinary Texans to higher electricity costs, shouldn’t we know exactly whom we are building it for?
