⭐ Morning Briefing — September 7, 2026

(Latest updates through September 7, 2026)

Top Story: ERCOT said today it intends to complete Governor Abbott's statewide data-center audit by December 10 — attaching the freeze's first real price tag, up to $8 billion and roughly a fifth of the nation's entire data-center pipeline delayed, to the 474-gigawatt interconnection queue still waiting on it.

📰 Today's News

1. 📋 ERCOT Puts a Date and a Dollar Figure on Abbott's Data-Center Freeze

ERCOT said today (Sept. 7) it intends to complete Governor Greg Abbott's audit of all data centers seeking a grid connection by December 10, 2026, according to Data Center Dynamics — the first firm completion date attached to a freeze that's run open-ended since early August.
The audit covers roughly 300 planned data centers currently in ERCOT's interconnection process, gathering information on how much of their cost and power they're self-funding, whether they bring their own water or rely on local supplies, and who actually owns and controls each project.
Chad Seely, ERCOT's senior VP of regulatory policy, general counsel and chief compliance officer, said requests for information started going out in late August and early September, with additional rounds expected in October and November before a comprehensive report reaches the PUC a week ahead of its December meeting.
Completing the audit is a prerequisite for ERCOT's "Batch Zero" interconnection study process to resume — meaning large-load interconnections statewide stay frozen until at least December 10.
Of the 474 GW ERCOT is currently evaluating, about 90% is attributed to data centers; reports cited by DCD suggest up to 20% of the entire U.S. data-center pipeline could be delayed by the audit, with a financial impact that could top $8 billion by the first quarter of 2027 across nearly 49.8 GW of affected projects.
Wall Street is already treating the standoff as a live risk factor: Wells Fargo's Shahriar Pourreza warned in a June note that local pushback reaching "state-wide scale in key markets" could pose "a material risk to future growth, stock values," and Morgan Stanley's Ariana Salvatore wrote Sept. 1 that it's "overly simplistic" to assume none of the industry's spending gets touched by the political backlash, per CNBC.

Today's Signal: This is the first time the freeze has gotten both a hard end date and a real number attached to it — December 10 is now the marker the entire 474-gigawatt queue, and the Wall Street analysts pricing the stocks tied to it, are watching.

2. 🏗️ Temple Approves a $4.2 Billion Data-Center Campus — and the Region's Toughest Zoning Rules, Same Night

Temple City Council voted Sept. 3 to advance Rowan Digital Infrastructure's three-phase, six-building hyperscale campus — a $4.2 billion investment, per the Austin Business Journal — annexing about 316 acres, granting conditional rezoning, and expanding tax-abatement reinvestment zones for the project, according to Chron.
Rowan committed to funding construction of the city's Synergy aquifer-storage-and-recovery well and roughly $32 million (45%) of Temple's $71.1 million South Temple Water Infrastructure Capital Program, plus $700 million in capital investment per abatement phase and 40 full-time jobs; the city says the campus's closed-loop cooling system will use less than 1% of Temple's daily water supply once running.
The same meeting, council passed new data-center zoning rules on first reading: developments are reclassified as "accessory" or "principal," principal centers in industrial areas now need a conditional-use permit, must sit at least 200 feet from single-family homes, and face required noise plans and sound testing, traffic studies, water-efficient cooling mandates, and independent technical reviewers paid for by the developer.
About a dozen residents spoke against the project at the meeting; Temple resident Chris Bosties said his family, on land dating to the 1870s, will soon have three hyperscale centers within five miles, telling council "you are literally killing us." Resident Joe Royer argued the new ordinance is undercut by a "clear loophole" — large data centers negotiate custom planned-development agreements that sidestep the standard rules entirely.

Today's Signal: Temple approved the project and wrote the region's most detailed data-center ordinance in the same session — a real-world template that Fort Worth's new Data Center & Infrastructure Commission and Denton's Sept. 22 public hearings will likely be measured against, even as one resident's "loophole" critique points at exactly the kind of custom deal Taylor's Project Mustang just used to escape zoning oversight altogether (see next story).

3. 🚪 Taylor Data-Center Developer Drops City Oversight, Keeps Building Anyway

The developers behind Project Mustang — a proposed 665-acre site near Taylor, east of Samsung's semiconductor plant, planned for at least two data centers and a 477-megawatt gas-fired generator — withdrew their annexation and zoning application with the City of Taylor, according to the Austin Business Journal and KVUE.
Because the site sits outside Taylor's city limits, the withdrawal means Taylor now has no zoning authority over the project at all; developer Big Watt Digital LLC is proceeding in unincorporated Williamson County instead.
KVUE reported today that the project is "moving forward" regardless — even though Taylor's Planning & Zoning Commission had only granted developers a 90-day continuance in August after resident pushback over the site's scale and its gas plant.
Residents who organized against the project in Taylor now have no city review process left to engage with; Williamson County's own land-use authority over unincorporated tracts is considerably lighter than a city's zoning code.

Today's Signal: Dropping the annexation request isn't a retreat — it's the fastest way to make a city's zoning process irrelevant, and it lands the same week a Temple resident warned that even a brand-new, detailed ordinance can be routed around by developers who'd rather negotiate a custom deal, or in Taylor's case, no deal at all.

4. 🪧 Parker County Residents Look to a New Legal Tool While They Wait on the Governor's Audit

A grassroots group calling itself the Parker County Data Center Awareness Coalition held an information meeting near Brock, where organizer Adrienne Malmberg said the group isn't opposed to all data centers, just ones "unsustainably and irresponsibly placed," according to the Weatherford Democrat.
Much of the discussion centered on Black Mountain's natural-gas turbine permit for its Pearson Ranch Road site, which organizer Marina Harris said is one of six to eleven data-center projects residents have heard could be headed for the county; Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller, also in attendance, noted Black Mountain's preliminary TCEQ permit cleared in about two months versus a typical eight.
The coalition is now pursuing formation of a "391 Commission" — a joint city-county legal entity requiring a partnership between two governments, with a board that's three-quarters elected officials and one-quarter residents — to give locals a formal voice in development terms.
Precinct 1 Commissioner George Conley told the paper he doesn't object to the idea but wants to see what Governor Abbott does with his data-center audit first; other commissioners hadn't responded by press time. The group says it has mailed 144 letters to Abbott and state Sen. Phil King and Rep. Mike Olcott so far.

Today's Signal: Even a commissioner sympathetic to the idea is waiting on Austin before acting locally — which means the December 10 audit deadline from today's top story is now the clock Parker County's own organizing effort is running against too.

Quiet today on new TCEQ air-permit filings beyond Black Mountain's already-secured Pearson Ranch turbines, and no new PUC docket rulings beyond ERCOT's audit timeline itself.

📍 Today's Watch List

Actionable Signals for Monday, September 7

ERCOT's December 10 audit-completion deadline, and whether the additional rounds of RFIs due out through October and November push that date further.
Whether ERCOT's "Batch Zero" interconnection studies actually resume once the audit closes, freeing up any of the 474-gigawatt queue.
Whether Temple's new data-center zoning ordinance survives a second reading unchanged, and whether Fort Worth's Data Center & Infrastructure Commission or Denton's Sept. 22 hearings adopt a similar conditional-use-permit model.
Whether Rowan Digital's amended tax-abatement agreement and phase-specific development, infrastructure and utility agreements return to Temple City Council as promised.
Whether Project Mustang's developers file directly with Williamson County now that Taylor's zoning review is off the table, and whether residents find another avenue to weigh in.
Whether Parker County Commissioners Court moves on a joint 391 Commission with a city partner, as the Data Center Awareness Coalition has requested.
Prosper Town Council's Sept. 8 vote on the Project Tomahawk rezoning, following the Planning & Zoning Commission's 7-0 recommendation to deny it.