⭐ Morning Briefing — Texas & DFW AI Data Centers, Grid, Land Use

(Latest updates through August 25, 2026)

Top Story: New tracking data confirms what residents near Texas's gas-plant buildout have long suspected: the state's dozen largest gas-fired power projects are being built specifically to run AI data centers, on pace to emit as much greenhouse gas annually as a mid-sized industrialized country.

📰 Today's News

1. 🏭 New Data Reveals Texas's Dozen Biggest Gas Plants Exist for One Customer: AI

Global Energy Monitor's newest Global Oil and Gas Plant Tracker, released Tuesday, finds the 12 largest gas-fired power projects now planned in Texas are all built specifically to run data centers, with planned and announced gas generation statewide up 50% in the last six months — more growth than any country besides the U.S. as a whole.
Texas now shows 81.7 gigawatts of gas power operating, another 99.4 GW in development, and 22.4 GW freshly announced; GEM project manager Jenny Martos said the frenzy of proposals is colliding with an already-tight turbine market, making it "nearly impossible... to guess what is a pie in the sky proposal, and what has a real chance of getting built."
Two Texas Panhandle projects show the scale: Fermi America's Project Matador — backed by former Gov. Rick Perry and previously known here mainly for its nuclear ambitions — is now permitted for 90 combined-cycle gas turbines expected to emit 24 million tons of greenhouse gases a year, while the newly filed Westline 2335 project proposes 240 gas generators across 20 "engine halls" for another 10 million tons annually.
Two more projects would emit roughly 8 million tons apiece: the Roman Energy Center's 640 gas-powered generators plus 25 backup diesel units, and the Longhorn Power Plant near Abilene — both described in permitting filings as power built solely for onsite data center consumption.
Closest to home, the Schlachter Realty data center power station south of Dallas proposes 891 Caterpillar 3516E emergency generators; the filing didn't disclose a greenhouse-gas estimate, but the generator count alone makes it one of the larger gas buildouts GEM identified anywhere in the state.
Gov. Greg Abbott, asked about the trend on ABC News Sunday, said data center operators "must not take power from the Texas power grid" and "need to make sure that they are not disturbing neighborhoods or rural communities" — guidance a behind-the-meter gas buildout like this one satisfies on paper, even as it multiplies the state's gas-fired emissions.

Today's Signal: GEM's data shows engines and simple-cycle turbines now make up nearly half of all gas generating capacity proposed for U.S. data centers — dirtier per megawatt than combined-cycle plants, but faster to deploy while Abbott's audit keeps the ERCOT interconnection queue frozen, which is exactly the incentive structure critics warned the pause would create.

2. 🏗️ Two More Land Deals Show Developers Aren't Waiting on Austin

Soluna Holdings closed its purchase of 397 acres in Briscoe County for Project Dorothy 3, a planned 300-megawatt renewable-first AI computing campus sited next to the company's own 150-MW Briscoe Wind Farm — giving it direct, behind-the-meter access to power it already owns instead of a place in ERCOT's frozen interconnection queue.
Sources told the Austin Business Journal that Anthropic is in talks to lease a planned 2,842-acre gas-fired data center campus in the Cedar Creek area of Bastrop County, being developed by Washington-based BlackChamber Partners and Dallas-based Pacifico Energy — the same firm behind the Pecos County gas plant Amazon acquired earlier this month.
In West Texas, developer Prometheus is advancing a 1.5-gigawatt "islanded" campus built entirely on private, onsite generation rather than a grid connection, according to Data Center Knowledge — another sign that behind-the-meter power, not the ERCOT queue, is where new capacity is actually moving while the audit continues.

Today's Signal: All three projects share the same workaround: none of them need anything from ERCOT's frozen interconnection queue, because each is built to make — or already owns — its own power. That's the exact structure Abbott's guardrails encourage, which is why the audit alone won't slow this particular category of buildout.

3. ⚖️ Hood County Still Hasn't Heard Back From Paxton's Office — Six Months Later

The Texas Attorney General's office notified Hood County Attorney Matt Mills on Monday that it needs more time to finish a legal opinion on whether the county can block local data center construction — a request Hood and a second rural county filed at the start of the year, under a state law that gives Paxton's office 180 days to answer or formally delay.
Mills told the Houston Chronicle he predicted "long ago" that he wouldn't hear back until after the November election, and Monday's letter did nothing to change that timeline.
Under current Texas law, counties have no zoning authority at all, meaning Hood County's fight over local data center construction hinges on whatever answer — or non-answer — eventually comes from Paxton, who is simultaneously courting the same rural voters as the leading GOP candidate for U.S. Senate.

Today's Signal: Paxton's own Senate platform is silent on whether counties should get zoning power over data centers, even as his opponent has made that question central to his campaign — which means Hood County's request may keep sitting unanswered for exactly as long as it stays convenient for Paxton not to take a side.

Quiet today on new ERCOT interconnection-queue or PUC docket filings beyond the already-tracked Batch Zero and audit timelines, and on new TCEQ public-comment notices in the eight tracked DFW-area counties specifically.

📍 Today's Watch List

Actionable Signals for Tuesday, August 25

Whether GEM's newly named projects — especially the Schlachter Realty site south of Dallas — draw TCEQ public-comment fights once their individual air permits become public.
Whether Soluna's Briscoe County site and Anthropic's Bastrop County lease talks convert into formal ERCOT interconnection filings once Batch Zero verification resumes, or stay entirely off-grid like Prometheus's islanded West Texas campus.
The Texas AG's office's still-pending opinion on Hood County's authority over data center construction, with attorney Matt Mills predicting no answer before the November election.
ERCOT's self-imposed Dec. 10 deadline to file its audit reports on the roughly 300 Batch Zero projects, and whether Abbott's separate audit clears in time to avoid pushing that date further.
The five pending PUC applications for the 765-kV West Texas transmission buildout, carried over from Aug. 24, with decisions still expected "within the next couple months."