• THE GRID
Texas Just Pulled the Plug on New Data Centers
474 gigawatts.
That's how much power is waiting in ERCOT's queue right now. Ninety percent of it is data centers. That's five times Texas's all-time peak demand. And on Monday, Greg Abbott said: enough.
The Texas governor ordered a pause on data center grid approvals until regulators audit every project in the queue. No new connections until they review it all. Power use. Water use. Tax breaks. Community impact. Ownership. All of it.
ERCOT didn't wait. It froze its Batch Zero review — the first wave of large-load projects it was set to send classification notifications on by August 7. That deadline is gone now.
"Any project that fails to comply with the requirements set forth by the PUCT and ERCOT, and by state law, must be denied connection to the Texas grid. Simply put, Texans must come first."
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This is Texas. The state that built its brand on deregulation and open-for-business energy. If Abbott is slamming the brakes, the politics of data centers have shifted fast.
The numbers back him up. ERCOT hit a new all-time peak of 91,308 MW on July 22 during a brutal heat wave. Texas already has 335 data centers running. At least 248 more are planned. And of the 377 companies the PUC asked to fill out a basic water-and-power survey, only 28 responded.
ERCOT Queue
474 GW
| Data Center Share
90%
|
ERCOT Peak (Jul 22)
91.3 GW
| Survey Response Rate
7%
|
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Now look at the other side. On Tuesday, Duke Energy posted Q2 earnings. Adjusted EPS of $1.43, beating estimates. Signed data center agreements jumped to 7.8 GW, with a 15.4 GW late-stage pipeline behind it. CFO Brian Savoy said there's $5 billion to $10 billion of capital upside tied to data center load.
So demand is real. The money is real. But so is the backlash.
Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller called Abbott's move "all hat and no cattle" and said only the legislature can pass real rules. Others say Abbott didn't go far enough. Either way, the biggest energy state in America just told the biggest tech build in history to wait in line.
Duke is raising capex because data centers keep signing contracts. Abbott is freezing approvals because the grid can't absorb them. Both things are true — and that gap is the single biggest risk in energy right now.
• BLACKOUT WATCH
Three Deadlines the Market Isn't Watching
Everyone is focused on earnings. I'm watching the calendar.
August 17 — FERC's show-cause deadline. All six RTOs must respond to FERC's June orders demanding they justify or fix their data center interconnection rules. Any RTO that wanted extra time had to file by August 3. That window is closed. In 11 days, we'll see which grid operators admit their rules are broken — and what they plan to do about it. New tariff language could reshape how data centers connect to the grid for years.
ERCOT's Batch Zero — paused with no new date. Texas's first wave of large-load classification notifications was supposed to land August 7. Abbott's audit killed that timeline. ERCOT said it's reviewing the order. There is no rescheduled date. Dozens of projects that had been moving through the queue are now in limbo. Developers who planned to break ground this fall are stuck.
Hyperscaler cash is running thin. J.P. Morgan estimates AI capex now eats 93% of the big cloud builders' cash flow from operations — up from 33% in 2023. That's not a growth rate. That's a wall. If any of the big four cut spending, the grid buildout they've been funding loses its anchor tenant. Utilities spending billions on new capacity could be left holding the bag.
The market prices data center demand as a sure thing. But two regulatory clocks and one cash-flow squeeze say it might not be.
• RESISTANCE
The Data Center Fight Just Reached Congress
Tuesday night in Michigan, a 30-something community organizer won a congressional primary. William Lawrence co-founded the Sunrise Movement. He ran on a single rallying cry: a federal moratorium on data centers.
He beat two better-funded Democrats in the 7th District — a genuine toss-up seat. He's the first nominee in a competitive House race to campaign on pausing AI infrastructure at the national level.
Data center moratoriums have jumped from local zoning boards to state capitals. Now they're headed to Congress. If Lawrence wins in November, he'll carry a federal pause bill into the House — something no state or local moratorium can match in scope.
This didn't happen in a vacuum. 833 opposition groups are active across 49 states, up from 396 at the end of 2025. In Q1 alone, local fights blocked or delayed 75 projects worth $130 billion.
And the cost side keeps fueling the anger. On August 1, National Grid raised its supply rate 11.8% — from 15.37¢ to 17.19¢ per kilowatt-hour. Eversource jumped 10.8%, to 17.32¢. Massachusetts households opened those bills this week. They're not in a mood to subsidize server farms.
The playbook used to be simple. Tech companies would pick a site, cut a deal with the local utility, and build. Now they face audits in Texas, a statewide ban in New York, a moratorium in Montgomery County and a local moratorium in Hillsboro, Oregon, and a congressional candidate who made opposing them a winning message.
Data center opposition is no longer a local nuisance. It's a political platform — and on Tuesday night, it won.
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