⭐ Morning Briefing — September 24, 2026

Top Story: Five Dallas City Council members formally asked Mayor Eric Johnson to tee up a public hearing on pausing permits for new hyperscale data centers — carrying the moratorium push into the core city of what the Dallas Morning News calls the world's top data-center market, the same week Lubbock's council voted to start a 90-day pause of its own.

📰 Today's News

1. 🏙️ Dallas and Lubbock Join the Local-Pause Wave

Council members Chad West, Kathy Stewart, Laura Cadena, Paul Ridley and Jaime Resendez sent a memo to Mayor Eric Johnson, reported Wednesday, asking that a potential moratorium on permits and initial certificates of occupancy for new hyperscale data centers be referred to a council committee and placed on a voting agenda within 30 days. The memo starts a process rather than halting anything: the full council would have to authorize a public hearing first, then separately approve any temporary restrictions.
The underlying problem is a zoning gap. Dallas has no land-use category for data centers; planning staff usually classify them as "communications exchange facilities," a use allowed by right across many industrial, commercial, office and mixed-use districts — which means some projects never go before the City Plan Commission or council at all. The five members cited noise, heat, water, electricity demand and quality of life, and floated setback, noise, water and power standards under a new, dedicated category.
In Lubbock, the council on Tuesday, Sept. 22 passed a resolution from council members Christy Martinez-Garcia and Gordon Harris calling for a 90-day moratorium on large-scale data centers, plus independent analysis and city guidelines. Two members — Tim Collins and Tim Green — voted no. A citizen petition from the Save Lubbock group seeking an 18-month moratorium never reached a vote; organizer Stephen Sanders said the group won't pursue a ballot measure now that the resolution passed. The pause still needs two public hearings and a final vote, a process that could take up to 90 days.
Collins said Wednesday he supports moratoriums in principle but wanted to hold this one "in our pockets" until the next legislative session, since Texas cities can use the tool only once, for up to 180 days. Green argued newer cooling technology has cut data-center water use and said staff are already drafting special-use standards.

Today's Signal: Dallas's "allowed by right" loophole is the quiet reason a small data center can appear behind a southeast Dallas motel with no public hearing at all. A moratorium buys time, but the lasting change here would be the new zoning category — and that's what the memo is really asking staff to build.

2. 🧊 Abbott's Permit Freeze Claims a First Casualty, and a First Carve-Out

Campaigning in Palestine on Tuesday, Gov. Abbott said every data center needing "any type of permit" is at "an absolute halt" until the state's water, power and air-permit studies come back, according to CBS19 reporting carried by the Tyler Morning Telegraph.
The Austin Business Journal reported Sept. 22 that a massive gas-powered data center campus in Bastrop County eyed by Anthropic appears paused after the order — the first project the paper found to be affected. (Full article paywalled; detail limited to the published headline and summary.)
In Grimes County, SpaceX's Terafab — first pitched to the county as a data center — is now classified as a chip manufacturing plant with an on-site data center serving only its own operations. County Judge Joe Fauth told KBTX he believes its permits are unaffected. Fauth said the project can't use groundwater and will run on recycled surface water from Gibbons Creek Reservoir and its own power supply, separate from ERCOT. Abbott's office referred KBTX back to its original press release; TCEQ and SpaceX didn't respond.
Near Waco, Infrakey executive Sujeeth Draksharam told the Waco Bridge the company's proposed 520-acre campus with Lacy-Lakeview shouldn't face problems, and that it plans to submit its water and energy information by the state's Oct. 12 filing deadline. Ross-area organizer Sara Mynarcik called the freeze an election-year stunt and noted Abbott appointed Draksharam to a state licensing commission in 2022.
For scale: Industrial Info Resources counts more than $94 billion in Texas data center projects under construction and about $1.18 trillion in planning and engineering. RTO Insider framed this week's action as a further tightening of Abbott's de facto ERCOT interconnection moratorium; its full report is paywalled, so this briefing couldn't confirm whether it describes a directive beyond Monday's TCEQ letter. Bisnow, meanwhile, paired Abbott's order with California Gov. Gavin Newsom's signing of seven data-center bills this week, calling the two moves a bipartisan turn against an industry both governors once courted.

Today's Signal: Terafab shows how quickly the freeze turns into an argument over labels. If a project with an on-site data center can clear it by calling itself a chip plant, TCEQ's Oct. 19 update will have to say where "data center project" ends.

3. 🔥 West Texas Gas Plants Keep Signing Up Data Centers

New Era Energy & Digital signed a 20-year power purchase agreement with Vistra subsidiary Luminant for at least 207 MW to serve phase one of its Texas Critical Data Center in Ector County, Data Center Dynamics reported Sept. 22. The power comes straight from Vistra's adjacent 1.1-GW gas plant in Odessa, with deliveries expected to start in Q3 2027. Vistra gets a 5% non-voting stake in the data center after first power, plus a right of first refusal on future development at the 438-acre campus.
Woodway Energy Infrastructure announced definitive agreements this week to build a 22-mile, 30-inch gas pipeline feeding a behind-the-meter power project at an unnamed hyperscale data center, targeting service in the first half of 2028. The company didn't disclose the site; w.media noted that all of Woodway's existing assets are in Texas.
At Data Center World Power in Dallas this week, vendors pitched packaged on-site engines and battery microgrids as ways to add load without straining the grid, Spectrum News reported, against an ERCOT projection that peak demand could reach nearly 368,000 MW by 2032.

Today's Signal: New Era's CEO said owning the power contract is what turns a site "with a power plan" into "permitted powered land." That's also the category Abbott's TCEQ freeze now puts under a microscope, which makes the phrase "construction permits in hand" worth more than it did last week.

4. ⛏️ Hut 8 Outbids the Field for a Bankrupt Miner's Two Texas Campuses

Hut 8 was named the winning bidder for bankrupt crypto miner Poolin's Pyote and Tarbush data center sites with a $140 million offer, according to a Wednesday court filing reported by The Block. That's nearly triple the $52 million in combined stalking-horse bids from Thor CALAP. Backup bids included $36.5 million from DigiPower X for Pyote and $100.5 million for Tarbush from Pecos Industrial Development, acting for AI infrastructure firm Fluidstack.
The sale still needs approval from the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of New Jersey at a Sept. 29 hearing. Hut 8's development pipeline is about 8.7 GW, and its Beacon Point campus received a conditional base-load classification through ERCOT's Batch Zero process earlier this month.

Today's Signal: With new interconnections frozen, a bankrupt miner's already-energized sites drew a bid nearly triple the opening floor, and a backup bid from Fluidstack's designee close behind. That spread shows what existing ERCOT capacity is worth during the pause.

5. 🏗️ Two DFW Sites Signal More Demand Despite the Pause

Core Scientific, which runs Denton's largest data center, has approached Denton Municipal Electric about leasing more public land south of its current facility, the Denton Record-Chronicle reported. DME's Chris Lutrick told the council the company "did not tell us what it's for" and hasn't asked for power beyond its existing agreement, which allows up to 391 MW with no curtailment requirement when prices spike. Core Scientific first leased 31 acres for bitcoin mining in 2021 and won unanimous approval in November 2024 for 47.9 more acres near Denton Enterprise Airport.
In the Alliance corridor, a state filing shows Colovore plans a $430 million, 156,500-square-foot data center — Colovore Alliance — along Heritage Parkway in far north Fort Worth (Denton County), with four roughly 21,000-square-foot data halls, the Cross Timbers Gazette reported Sept. 22. Construction is set to begin in December and finish by December 2028. The company says the fully liquid-cooled facility will draw 32 MW.

Today's Signal: Core Scientific's approach to DME came in the middle of Denton's moratorium debate — and since the proposed pause only covers new applications, whether a lease expansion counts as "new" is likely to become the next fight there.

The eight tracked counties produced no new TCEQ air-permit filings beyond the statewide freeze itself, no fresh Texas noise or nuisance suit surfaced, and the PUC docket was quiet after last week's final large-load rule.

📍 Today's Watch List

Whether Mayor Eric Johnson refers the five-member Dallas memo to committee, and whether a hyperscale moratorium hearing lands on a council voting agenda within the requested 30 days.
Lubbock's two required public hearings and final vote on its 90-day pause, expected within roughly 90 days.
Hut 8's $140 million Poolin purchase goes before the New Jersey bankruptcy court on Sept. 29.
The state's Oct. 12 deadline for data center developers to submit water and energy information (cited by Infrakey).
TCEQ's update to the governor's office, due Oct. 19. Watch whether it defines which projects count as "data center" projects, given Terafab's chip-plant classification.
Whether the Austin Business Journal's Bastrop County report is followed by confirmation of other projects stalled under the freeze.
Denton's second moratorium hearing on Oct. 27, and whether Core Scientific files a formal lease request with Denton Municipal Electric before then.
Colovore Alliance's planned December construction start in far north Fort Worth.
ERCOT's December 10 audit-completion deadline. No material movement is expected before the December PUC meeting, so this stays at the bottom of the list until that date approaches.