WHAT’S HAPPENING TODAY: Good afternoon and happy Monday, readers! People across the northern United States could get the chance to see a partial solar eclipse this Wednesday. Here in D.C. around 1 p.m., about 4% of the sun will be covered, according to NASA. 🌔Welcome to Daily on Energy, written by Washington Examiner energy and environment writers Callie Patteson (@CalliePatteson) and Maydeen Merino (@MaydeenMerino). Email cpatteson@washingtonexaminer dot com or mmerino@washingtonexaminer dot com for tips, suggestions, calendar items, and anything else. If a friend sent this to you and you’d like to sign up, click here. If signing up doesn’t work, shoot us an email, and we’ll add you to our list. Meta has agreed to Texas’s standards for data centers.
Texas, like many other states, is experiencing rapid growth in data centers. But concerns regarding energy costs and water consumption have prompted not only Democrat-led states, but also Republican-led states to implement regulations and even moratoriums. Republican Gov. Greg Abbott earlier this summer issued new standards requiring data centers to pay for their own grid interconnections and infrastructure costs, and to use closed-loop water systems. Meta today agreed to follow those standards when developing data centers in the Lone Star State. “We pay the full costs of our data centers’ energy and water use so they aren’t passed on to consumers,” Meta said in a press release. Texas director of Public Citizen, Adrian Shelley told Daily on Energy in a statement that the governor’s directive seems to have “pleased data center developers, but communities across the state remain concerned and angry.” Shelley added that until there is state legislation to protect communities, “Texans have little reason to believe Meta and others.” She noted that Meta’s proposed data center in El Paso would not be covered by Abbott’s standards since it is in West Texas and not within the state’s Electric Reliability Council grid. Abbott has even gone a step further, to place a statewide moratorium on data centers, while the state’s Public Utility Commission and Electric Reliability Council completes an audit on all AI facilities wanting to connect to the state’s grid. There are over 474 gigawatts of requests to connect to Texas’ energy grid, with about 90% of the requests being from data centers, Abbott said. President Donald Trump, who has encouraged the growth in data centers, recently criticized Abbott’s crackdown on data centers. The president told Punchbowl News in an interview on Friday that, “I think it’s a mistake. And I’m not taking positions, I just think it’s a mistake, because there are other communities that want it. When a community wants it, it means a lot of money is going to come into that community.”Republican politicians are increasingly open to rules for data centers. Vivek Ramaswamy, for example, the GOP nominee for Ohio governor, has proposed new data center requirements and a moratorium on development until legislation is passed. As part of his proposal, Ramaswamy would have data centers cover nearby households’ electricity bills and would require them to reduce local property taxes. They also would have to comply with environmental standards. AMAZON UNDER FIRE OVER DATA CENTER THAT COULD HAVE MOST POLLUTING POWER PLANT IN THE COUNTRY:
