Texas froze 474 gigawatts. Here's what happens next.

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Hello Fort Worth Insiders!

Gmail says I talk too much… so…

If its ok with you, I don’t want to shorten the information I share with you, I believe you can cherry pick which parts matter most to you and for whatever area matters most to you.

So saying that, from here onwards, I’ll be going deeper on some of our more intricate stories which means an additional email here and there for you get the most information to therefore come to your own conclusions, sound good?

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Kirstine

One letter. Everything stopped.

THE SHORT VERSION

On 3 August, Governor Abbott sent a letter that froze every data centre waiting to plug into the Texas power grid. All of them. There are 474 gigawatts of requests in that queue - more than five times the most electricity Texas has ever used at once - and about 90% of it is data centers. Every project now has to pass an audit before it gets power. Any that fails "must be denied." The results land on 10 December.

That single letter is now the biggest thing standing between our patch and the largest building boom in its history.

2023 - The queue of large users wanting to connect to the grid sits at about 48 gigawatts. Big, but manageable.

April 2026 - ERCOT forecasts that peak demand could more than quadruple by 2032. Then it adds an unusual warning: the forecast may be inflated.

June 2026 - Regulators approve "Batch Zero," a new way to assess huge power users in groups rather than one at a time. The queue has reached 438 gigawatts.

July 2026 - New York pauses new data centre approvals for up to a year while it writes new rules.

11 August - Fort Worth City Council votes unanimously to start a 90-day pause on new data centre projects, and 10-1 to create a new Data Center & Infrastructure Commission to advise the city.

3 August - Abbott's letter. The queue is now 474 gigawatts. Everything stops.

25 August - Council votes 7-4 to approve an amended site plan for 187 acres of the $10 billion Black Mountain project on the city's south-east edge. The pause and the approvals are running at the same time.

10 December - ERCOT must file its verification report. Regulators discuss it on 17 December.

Here's the part nobody explains properly.

If you're buying

Stop asking "is there a data centre near this house?" Start asking "is there one in the queue near this house?" Those are different questions, and only the second one matters now.

A campus that has bought land, filed permits and lined up an abatement may still never get power. That means the scary map you saw on Facebook is not a forecast - it's a wish list, and some of it is about to be deleted.

The practical move: before you write an offer in north Fort Worth, far east Fort Worth, or anywhere along the Jack and Wise county line, check the county commissioners' agenda for the last six months. Land sales, reinvestment zones and abatement applications all show up there months before anything is announced. That is where you find out what's coming, not from a listing.

If you're selling

If you own within a mile or two of a proposed site, the next hundred days matter more than the last year did.

Right now buyers are pricing in fear, because nobody knows which projects are real. After 10 December, some of that uncertainty resolves. If the project near you gets denied, that cloud lifts. If it gets approved, you'll want to have sold already - or be ready to price for it.

Either way, do not let a buyer negotiate against a rumour. Bring the actual filing to the table. Facts beat vibes in a negotiation, every time.

If you're staying put

This is really a water and power story wearing a technology costume.

Fort Worth has been in moderate drought since 11 August. Tarrant County has a 90-day burn ban running. The state says it needs $174 billion over 50 years to avoid an extreme water shortage - and this year the state water fund turned down 13 of 23 applications because it only had $1.28 billion against $4.2 billion of requests.

Into that, we're being asked to add facilities that each drink hundreds of thousands of gallons and pull hundreds of megawatts. The audit asks exactly the right question of each one: are you bringing your own water and power, or taking ours?

The answer decides what your utility bill looks like in five years. Genuinely.

The industry has a real case, and it deserves airing.

Data centres paid $4.5 billion in state and local taxes in Texas in 2024, including $2.3 billion to local government - schools, roads, police. The Data Center Coalition says it welcomes the audit, because it will separate serious operators from speculators, and it's urging regulators to move fast so committed investors aren't punished for the sins of the tyre-kickers. That's fair. Some of that 474 gigawatts isn't real - developers file with several utilities for the same campus, which the industry itself calls "ghost demand." ERCOT knows this. It's part of why the audit exists.

But the critics have numbers too. Data centres create very few permanent jobs relative to the money invested - some operators have struggled to meet a minimum of 20 employees. The sales tax break is costing over a billion a year. Business property tax breaks cost Texas schools $275 million last year. And there's a wrinkle most people miss: new taxable property can actually reduce a school district's state aid rather than adding to it, so the promised windfall sometimes isn't one.

Where I land: the audit is the right idea. The queue was never going to be built, and pretending otherwise was distorting every land decision in four counties. What worries me is the gap between our council approving a $10 billion campus on 25 August and the state auditing that same industry from 3 August. We're pausing and accelerating at the same time.

Pull up your county's commissioners court agenda - Tarrant, Parker, Wise, Denton or Johnson - and search the last six months for "reinvestment zone" and "abatement."

Ten minutes. You will know more about what's coming to your area than almost anyone on your street. And if something's filed near you, you'll have found out while there's still time to speak at a hearing.

Got a question about a project near your street? Reply to this email - I read every one.

Thinking of buying or selling in an affected area? Let's talk before December.

- Kirstine

What should we cover next? Who should we interview? What do you want researched? Reply and tell us - your ideas shape what comes next.

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🏡 I'm Kirstine Openshaw, Top 250 Fort Worth Texas Realtor. Clive and I own the Fort Worth Pulse Realty Group, your insider guide to Living in Fort Worth. I get you the home. Clive gets you the loan. Fort Worth's been in our blood since 2006. I believe when you know more, you win more. That's why I track the pulse, so you always have the edge. Let's get you home. 🏡 🔑 NMLS #2639452

Clive is my husband, a custom home builder and a Mortgage Loan Originator.

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at SERHANT Texas LLC

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