What happened in this Energy story?

Meta's $10 billion, 1-gigawatt data center in northeast El Paso is still advancing after the company locked in tax abatements and broke ground, even as Texas officials have paused permitting for other data center projects; the local electric utility evaluated only natural gas as a power source.

What is a key fact in this story? (1)

**Meta** is pressing ahead with its $10 billion, 1-gigawatt data center in northeast El Paso, one of the few projects still moving as Texas officials pause permitting for new data centers statewide.

What is a key fact in this story? (2)

**Meta** had already signed tax abatement agreements with El Paso, cleared regulatory requirements, and started construction before the state-level permitting pause took effect.

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Texas Electric Utility Only Considered Gas to Power $10 Billion Meta Data Center — SkimNews

By Inside Climate News · Summarized & edited by Kapil Samant · 2026-09-24

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Meta is pressing ahead with its $10 billion, 1-gigawatt data center in northeast El Paso, one of the few projects still moving as Texas officials pause permitting for new data centers statewide.
Meta had already signed tax abatement agreements with El Paso, cleared regulatory requirements, and started construction before the state-level permitting pause took effect.
The Texas electric utility serving the site only considered natural gas as the generation source for the facility's power needs.
Texas officials have hit pause on data center permitting broadly, leaving the Meta project as an outlier that secured its approvals ahead of the freeze.

Why it matters: A 1-gigawatt load running on gas-only generation locks in fossil-fuel demand for one of the largest single data center builds in the country and sidelines renewable options before they were even evaluated — a template other utilities and hyperscalers may face as Texas reconsiders its data center pipeline.