Texas wants to slow data centers and the new power lines. The grid operator says the delay could mean blackouts in West Texas.

Texas lawmakers and Gov. Greg Abbott, who once welcomed the data-center boom and the new 765-kV transmission lines, the largest the state has tried to build, now want to slow it. The pushback is concentrated in rural West Texas counties where the lines and the data centers are sited, and the land, water, and energy footprint is the substance of the complaint, not a pretext. Dozens of legislators have called for the buildout to be scrapped before the November 2026 election.

Abbott's audit of data centers seeking grid connection has forced the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the state's grid operator, to pause a first-of-its-kind rework of the queue of facilities waiting to be connected to the grid and powered up. The pause freezes the only mechanism ERCOT had to match a fast-moving data-center load forecast to the slower pace of transmission planning. In July testimony, the grid operator's chief operating officer told state officials that West Texas faces a credible rolling-blackout scenario if the 765-kV lines are not built, and that congestion on the existing grid is already pushing up energy prices for residents who have no stake in the new data-center load. The West Zone had posted a 12.3% congestion figure, the same pocket where most of the new data-center load is queued.

The on-record choice is no longer whether to build. It is whether to keep building under the old, slower interconnection rules, or to let a queue rework catch up to a load forecast that is moving faster than transmission planning can plan for. Named projects on the 765-kV docket include AEP's Howard-Solstice line and LCRA's Bell County East to Big Hill 765-kV project. Oncor and LCRA previously proposed up to 244 miles of 765-kV transmission under the same Public Utility Commission docket.

The land, water, and energy footprint of each project shows up in driveways and tax notices long before it shows up in any rate-case filing, and each line cuts a right-of-way through a place where the landowner vote counts. Jim Henson told the Tribune that politics is now outweighing policy on the issue.

The oil-and-gas industry has joined the buildout side, arguing that its own Permian expansion depends on the same transmission, and that the pause has created uncertainty for every other industry waiting on grid power. Five years after Winter Storm Uri killed hundreds of Texans and turned the state grid into a political albatross, the same grid fight is back. Only this time the trigger is a data-center buildout, not a once-in-a-generation winter storm, and the rural counties hosting the new load are the same ones whose state senators face the November ballot.

The audit can reset the queue and the rural-siting rules. It can also leave West Texas on a slower path to the same blackout risk that drove the post-Uri rewrite. Rural voters will pay in either case, whether the lines get built or do not. The Legislature's task is to address the land-use concern before the summer peak forces the reliability concern onto the same ballot. ERCOT's next load forecast and any siting ruling on the AEP Howard-Solstice and LCRA Big Hill projects will show which way the trade-off is being resolved.