President Donald Trump said Texas is making a mistake by pausing data center approvals, in an interview with Punchbowl News released Friday.
"I saw Texas the other day sort of is against data centers. I think it's a mistake," Trump said.
He compared the industry's potential to the one Texas is best known for. "For Texas to say no to data centers is a mistake in the sense that it could be bigger than oil," he said.
Trump also said data centers are "tremendously important for the economics," and that "when a community wants it, it means a lot of money is going to come into that community." He said that if he were a governor he would want the projects and would cut taxes to attract them, and that other countries would benefit if the United States slowed development.
What Texas actually did
Gov. Greg Abbott announced the pause on Monday, Aug. 3, in a letter to the Public Utility Commission of Texas and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas.
It halts approvals for new data centers seeking to connect to the ERCOT grid until state agencies audit them. The audits are to assess tax breaks, power and water consumption, cooling methods, efforts to mitigate community impact and facility ownership. Projects that do not clear the review are to be denied grid connection.
The order does not ban data centers, and it does not cover projects that supply their own power on site rather than connecting to the grid.
The state's response
Abbott spokesperson Andrew Mahaleris said the pause followed a shortfall in information from the industry, saying fewer than 10 percent of data centers had provided the power and water usage figures the state requested.
He cited a 500 percent increase in peak electricity demand tracked by ERCOT.
