Developers pitch data centers’ benefits to Texas lawmakers in committee hearing
Data center developers pitched state lawmakers on the benefits of the industry during the Texas House’s first data center-focused hearing.
The Thursday meeting was the House State Affairs Committee’s first on the subject since receiving the interim charge late last month from House Speaker Dustin Burrows. It’s one of several data center-related topics being studied by lawmakers ahead of January, when the elected officials return to Austin for the next legislative session.
The committee heard from several data center developers and energy industry officials about the current and projected data center landscape. Speakers, including developers with North Texas data center projects and representatives from electric companies Oncor and Vistra, touched on subjects such as connecting to the ERCOT power grid, water consumption, workforce development and community involvement during the roughly five-hour meeting.
“I think we can see this as the next iteration of, kind of, the oil boom that happened in Texas,” said Haynes Strader, chief development officer at Dallas-based Skybox Datacenters, which has a project in Wichita Falls.
As projects across Texas face pushback from residents, the data center industry professionals assured the lawmakers that they were working to be good community partners and would be beneficial to the economy.
Lawmakers asked developers and industry representatives about how much water and power the centers require and what types of systems they use to cool their facilities. Many Texans have raised questions about the amount of power and water it takes to keep large data centers up and running.
Speakers sought to quell those concerns.
“Data centers have become this physical thing to be mad about if you’re afraid of AI, if you’re afraid of this technology,” Strader said.
He said Skybox’s data centers, on average, use less water each year than five households.
Public Utilities Commission of Texas Chairman Thomas Gleeson said the commission is working to make sure data centers don’t drive up electricity costs for Texans. He and ERCOT President and CEO Pablo Vegas made up the day’s first panel of speakers.
“The companies that we talk to are committed to not having residential rate payers bear the cost of this,” Gleeson said.
Some speakers expressed frustrations around the process for integrating data centers into the ERCOT system, which is in a transition period as new rules are hashed out.
Speed and time are “of the essence,” said Rhett Bennett, CEO of Black Mountain, which is looking to build a data center in southeast Fort Worth.
“Certainly data companies want to be in Texas,” he said earlier in the discussion. “I think we want the economic development, but there’s no doubt that other states are competing for that economic development as well.”
Rep. Ken King, a Republican from Canadian who chairs the state affairs committee, said the committee will take testimony from members of the public about data centers as it prepares for the next legislative session.
“We’re going to say ‘data center’ a lot through this interim,” he said.
