In a letter penned on Sept. 21, Gov. Greg Abbott ordered Texas’ environmental regulators “to halt all permits sought by data centers.” The next day, the agency mailed notices of preliminary approval to three major data center-related power projects.
That’s one of 35 permitting actions the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) took on data center projects in the weeks after Abbott’s order, according to an analysis of public records by the watchdog groups FracTracker Alliance and Public Citizen, first reported by Inside Climate News.
The findings come as data centers have become one of the defining issues of Abbott’s race against Democrat Gina Hinojosa. Across Texas, from Fort Worth neighborhoods fighting data centers near their homes to East Texas towns fending off proposals, residents have pushed back on the facilities’ demands on the power grid, water and land, Courier Texas has reported.
Abbott, who spent years courting the industry, has responded by calling for limits. Meanwhile, the industry has become one of his biggest sources of campaign cash, giving about $9 million this cycle, according to The Texas Tribune.
A faux pause?
According to the watchdog groups, since Abbott’s Sept. 21 letter, the environmental agency has fast-tracked or assigned engineers to 14 permits, approved stormwater coverage for 11, certified emissions estimates for seven, and issued public notices for three. Most of the permits involve gas-fired power plants built to supply data centers.
“These actions do not signal an agency trying to pause,” the groups said in a statement.
Abbott’s office says the pause applies to approving permits, not processing them.
“No permits have been approved,” Abbott’s press secretary, Andrew Mahaleris, told Inside Climate News.
In a statement to Courier Texas, Abbott’s office said, “In line with the Governor’s directive, TCEQ has not taken and will not take any proactive actions related to the approval of data center permits. Likewise, no other state agency will approve data center-related permits until the Public Utility Commission, ERCOT, and the Water Development Board have the information they need to make informed decisions.”
But Abbott’s own letter went further. “No other state agency shall move forward with regulatory approvals related to data centers until this information is acquired,” he wrote, referring to studies of the facilities’ effects on water and the electrical grid.
In an Oct. 19 letter to Abbott, the agency’s interim executive director, Steven Schar, said staff are screening pending applications. “If a permit application is subject to the directive, TCEQ has paused that permit application,” Schar wrote. He didn’t explain how the agency decides which applications are covered.
The stakes are massive. The proposed gas plants would release tens of thousands of tons of regulated pollutants and more than 100 million tons of greenhouse gases a year, roughly equal to the annual emissions of a mid-sized industrialized country, according to permitting documents reviewed by Inside Climate News.
Even some Republicans are skeptical. Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller said he had asked the governor for a moratorium on data centers and a special legislative session to address them, and Abbott refused both.
“His pause is just a ruse,” Miller said in a recent appearance on MSNOW. “No one stopped construction.” He went on to describe Abbott’s data center push into the state as ”unregulated with no oversight, no organization whatsoever, no guardrails.”
Miller lost his reelection bid in the March Republican primary to Nate Sheets, whom Abbott endorsed.
“We need an actual pause to study the threats posed to the land, water, and livelihoods of Texans,” said Sam Law, a FracTracker spokesperson and the report’s author.
The money
Possible evidence of Miller’s “ruse” criticism is the fact Abbott has raised about $9 million from data center-related donors since July 2025, roughly 13% of his total fundraising, the Tribune found. About $4.9 million came from people and companies that build, own or operate data centers.
Among them: Rhett Bennett, CEO of Black Mountain, which is building a $10 billion data center campus in southeast Fort Worth over residents’ objections in a process shrouded in secrecy. Bennett and his company gave Abbott a combined $1 million.
The money kept coming as Abbott’s stance hardened. Industry-related donors gave him $1.5 million in June, the month he called for ending data centers’ sales tax break. They gave $2.8 million in September, his biggest monthly haul yet from the industry, the Tribune found.
Jim Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin, told the outlet the industry expects to help negotiate the new rules. “Continuing to support the governor financially demonstrates the desire to be at the table,” he said.
Abbott’s campaign said his position is clear: data centers “must pay their own way, protect Texas’ electric grid, bring their own water, and not to disturb [sic] the communities where they operate.” A spokesperson called the Tribune’s reporting “a disingenuous attempt to manufacture controversy out of information that is not new.”
Early voting runs through Oct. 30. Election Day is Nov. 3.
