Texas is putting a procedural brake on its data-center expansion. A September 13 Financial Times report says Governor Greg Abbott has halted new approvals pending an audit of projects seeking connection to the state grid. The underlying state directive, issued August 3, says the Public Utility Commission of Texas and ERCOT must complete a comprehensive verification and audit before any data-center project moving through ERCOT’s interconnection process can advance.
Grid access becomes the gating layer
The Governor’s office says ERCOT is considering more than 474 gigawatts of connection requests—over five times Texas’s record peak electricity demand—and that about 90% of new requests are data centers. The directive says projects that fail PUCT and ERCOT requirements will be denied a Texas grid connection. The Verge separately reported the same scope and described the order as an effective pause, corroborating the policy’s immediate infrastructure significance.
What the audit will ask for
The state wants each project to disclose public subsidies and incentives, projected annual and peak electricity use, progress toward on-site generation or demand reduction, water sources and annual and peak consumption, cooling technology, measures to reduce noise, light, traffic, and emergency-response impacts, and project ownership and control. That turns interconnection review into a broader test of whether a proposed AI facility is paying for and managing its local infrastructure burden.
The official directive does not set a completion date or say which individual projects will ultimately be approved. The Financial Times reported uncertainty among developers as they navigate the changing process. The immediate fact is the audit requirement and reported pause; the effect on Texas investment, construction schedules, power prices, and water demand remains an open question.