Everything's Bigger in Texas – Including the Data Center Backlash

The Senate race between Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Democratic state Rep. James Talarico for the Senate seat being vacated by Sen. John Cornyn is arguably the most closely watched battle this midterm season and has the potential to decide which party controls the upper chamber of Congress next year.

With the stakes so high and millions of dollars pouring into both campaigns, the fate of this election could hinge on the stances Paxton and Talarico take on one particularly divisive issue in Texas: data centers and the wealthy companies like Amazon that are building them across the state.

These massive facilities that power everything from internet searches to complex artificial intelligence have become a flashpoint in Texas, dividing many voters and setting off tough conversations on everything from quality of life and pollution to rising electricity costs and tax incentives for the Big Tech companies building these centers. And the stakes got even higher earlier this month when Amazon confirmed it was investing in a natural-gas-burning power plant as part of a huge data center in Texas that could become the largest single source of pollution in the U.S.

Before Texans head to the polls in November, both Paxton and Talarico owe it to voters to lay out firmly where they stand on data centers and pledge that their interests lay with the people of Texas and not with the tech billionaires profiting off the near-unchecked growth of these facilities.

Of the two men running for Senate, Talarico has arguably been more transparent on his stances toward data centers. While he opposes a full moratorium on data centers in the state – arguing that the state needs to strike a balance between investment in technology and supporting working people – he has laid out a lengthy plan for how to regulate the facilities.

Among the proposals made in Talarico’s plan are ending the tax exemption for data centers; requiring large energy users to pay for their own infrastructure and grid interconnection costs instead of having taxpayers foot the bill; making data centers recycle water through closed-loop systems; and setting minimum federal requirements to protect the grid, environment, jobs and transparency for new data centers.

Talarico has also called for giving local communities a chance to decide whether to allow for the construction of data centers near where they live.

Paxton, on the other hand, has come across as much more friendly to data centers – arguing that they are crucial to the United States maintain a competitive technological advantage over China. Despite this, Paxton has said he sympathy for Texans who don’t want one of these facilities built next to their homes and, as attorney general, is currently being asked to decide whether residents in one county have the right to halt development of a data center.

The attorney general’s stance on data centers has put him in a bind as he tries to woo many constituents who would normally be reliable voters for him – conservative Christians and rural Texans, for example – while also advocating for the pro-growth tech investments favored by state Republican leadership.

Whether it be religious conservatives in rural areas or urban Democrats in places like Austin and Dallas, one thing that is clear is Texans overwhelmingly oppose data centers with a recent University of Texas at Austin and the Texas Politics Project finding 56% of respondents were against the construction of these facilities in their communities.

The backlash against data centers has even forced some of their biggest proponents in the state to rethink their strategies. Gov. Greg Abbott has called on state lawmakers to craft legislation ensuring that centers will have a net positive effect on electricity consumption, reduce noise and inconveniences to neighborhoods, repeal tax incentives for data centers, and require ecological reports.

Most recently, the governor called for a ban on data center development in rural Texas neighborhoodsand placed a moratorium on new projects until a complete an audit of nearly 2,000 proposed data centers.

Abbott’s moves are promising steps in reining in the out-of-control growth of data centers and the myriad issues they cause for Texans, but the real battle will be fought on Capitol Hill as any action must have the weight of the federal government behind it. That is why – whether it is Paxton or Talarico who ultimately wins come November – Texas’ next senator first and foremost must have the interests of their constituents and not Big Tech.

—The Editors at Texas Politics