Rights. Accountability. Awareness.
The record doesn’t blink.
Keep your eyes on Texas.
Elections & Public Trust · Governor Record · Part 4
Texas rebuilt major parts of its electricity rules after Winter Storm Uri.
Now the state faces a different test.
Electric demand is growing rapidly. Data centers are seeking enormous amounts of power. Billions of dollars in generation and transmission investment are moving through the system. And Texans are hearing competing promises about what state government can — and cannot — do about their electric bills.
Republican Gov. Greg Abbott points to post-Uri reforms, new generation, transmission development and new restrictions on large data-center projects. On household costs, he is proposing an expansion of retail electric competition into areas served by municipally owned utilities.
Democratic nominee Gina Hinojosa argues Texans are paying too much under the existing system. She proposes freezing residential electricity rates and has called for a broader moratorium on new data centers until lawmakers establish additional protections.
Libertarian Pat Dixon is also on the general-election ballot, but The Texas Public Record did not identify a comparably detailed current electricity plan from his campaign addressing the specific issues examined here.
This is the fourth installment of The Texas Public Record’s examination of the 2026 race for Texas governor.
Any examination of Abbott’s electricity record has to begin with February 2021.
Winter Storm Uri caused widespread generation failures and forced ERCOT to order massive load shedding. Millions of Texans lost electricity during extreme cold.
The Legislature responded with significant changes.
Senate Bill 3 required weatherization of specified electric and natural-gas infrastructure, established additional emergency-planning requirements and directed ERCOT and state regulators to strengthen reliability measures.
The law also created new coordination requirements between the electricity and natural-gas systems.
Those reforms are part of Abbott’s governing record.
But they weren’t enacted by the governor alone.
The Legislature wrote and passed the laws. Abbott signed them. The Public Utility Commission, Railroad Commission, ERCOT and regulated industries have been responsible for implementing substantial portions of them.
So two statements can simultaneously be true:
Texas materially changed its grid rules after Uri.
And those changes do not mean every reliability, affordability or infrastructure problem has been permanently resolved.
Texas hasn’t simply rewritten regulations.
Its generation mix has expanded.
ERCOT reports that approximately 62,000 megawatts of new generation resources were synchronized to the grid between 2021 and 2025.
About 31,000 MW came from solar.
Approximately 16,000 MW came from battery energy storage.
Wind accounted for roughly 10,000 MW.
Thermal resources, including gas and diesel generation, accounted for about 5,000 MW.
Those numbers complicate simplified political descriptions of Texas energy policy.
Texas remains the country’s dominant oil-and-gas state, and Abbott continues to promote fossil-fuel development.
But much of the recent capacity added to the ERCOT system has come from solar generation and battery storage.
ERCOT is also examining how the growing amount of inverter-based technology — including solar, wind and batteries — can contribute to grid reliability.
Texas isn’t only adding electricity supply.
It is confronting extraordinary requests for new electricity demand.
In its April 1, 2026 presentation to the Texas Senate Committee on Business & Commerce, ERCOT reported that it was tracking approximately 410 gigawatts of prospective large-load interconnection requests through 2030.
About 87% of that prospective demand was associated with data centers.
Those numbers require context.
The 410-GW figure, presented in April using data as of March 26, was a snapshot of prospective large loads seeking interconnection.
It did not mean Texas data centers were consuming 410 GW of electricity.
And it did not mean every project in the queue would be built.
Interconnection pipelines can contain projects that are speculative, duplicative, relocated, reduced in size or ultimately abandoned.
By August, Abbott’s office said ERCOT was considering more than 474 GW of requests to connect to the grid, approximately 90% associated with data centers.
That later figure likewise represents prospective interconnection demand — not current consumption.
But even after those qualifications, the scale is extraordinary enough that Texas has repeatedly changed how it evaluates major new loads.
Senate Bill 6 became law in June 2025.
The law directed the Public Utility Commission to establish standards for connecting large-load customers in ERCOT while protecting reliability and reducing the risk that ordinary customers are left paying for infrastructure built for projects that never materialize.
The statute generally sets 75 megawatts as the large-load threshold unless the PUC determines a lower threshold is necessary.
It also requires covered large-load customers to contribute toward the costs of interconnecting them to the electric system.
SB 6 reaches beyond the initial connection.
It requires mechanisms allowing certain large loads to be curtailed during firm load shed and directs development of a reliability service capable of procuring demand reductions from qualifying large customers during anticipated emergency conditions.
Texas has therefore already moved beyond a system in which enormous new loads simply request electricity and proceed under rules designed for ordinary customers.
The law now specifically recognizes the planning, reliability and infrastructure-cost issues created by large loads.
No.
That description does not accurately capture the current legal framework.
SB 6 established specific statutory requirements governing large electrical loads.
PUCT and ERCOT have been developing the regulatory and interconnection processes necessary to implement those requirements.
And Abbott has gone further through executive directives aimed specifically at data centers.
The legitimate policy dispute is no longer whether rules exist.
They do.
The unresolved questions are whether those rules are sufficient, how they should be enforced and how much further Texas should go.
This is where the 2026 record has changed substantially.
On August 3, Abbott directed PUCT and ERCOT to conduct a comprehensive audit of data centers advancing through ERCOT’s interconnection process.
The directive says the audit must be completed before a data-center project moves forward through that process.
Abbott ordered regulators to obtain information concerning projected electricity demand, on-site generation, water consumption and sources, public incentives, ownership and impacts on surrounding communities.
Then the state response escalated again.
On September 14, Abbott directed the Texas Water Development Board to compel major water users, including data centers, to comply with water-use reporting requirements and pursue legal consequences for failures to comply with state law.
On September 21, Abbott directed the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to halt permits sought by data centers until ERCOT completes its audit.
His directive says no state agency should move forward with regulatory approvals related to data-center development until the information required by PUCT, ERCOT and TWDB is obtained.
Abbott also says data-center projects must cover their electrical-infrastructure costs, report electricity and water usage, protect water needed by local communities and comply with other state requirements.
And he says he intends to work with lawmakers next session to eliminate financial incentives for data centers.
That matters to the gubernatorial comparison.
Abbott’s current position can no longer be described simply as allowing continued data-center development under existing rules.
His administration is now using executive authority to stop at least some regulatory approvals while state audits proceed.
Hinojosa moved toward a halt earlier.
In July, she called on Abbott to impose an emergency moratorium on new data centers until the Legislature could meet and establish additional protections.
Her proposal centers on electricity, water and local control.
At the time, it went substantially beyond the regulatory framework Texas had enacted through SB 6.
But Abbott’s subsequent directives narrowed the difference between the candidates on the basic question of whether some development should be stopped while Texas examines its impacts.
The two positions still are not identical.
Hinojosa called for a broader emergency moratorium on new data centers until a legislative session establishes additional protections.
Abbott has ordered audits and directed TCEQ to halt data-center permits while those audits and information requirements are completed.
So the current record is not:
One candidate wants development stopped and the other does not.
The distinction is now about scope, mechanism, conditions and what happens next.
No.
This distinction remains critical.
ERCOT’s approximately 410-GW figure from April represented prospective large loads seeking interconnection through 2030.
Approximately 87% of that prospective demand was associated with data centers.
It was not a measurement of electricity already being consumed by Texas data centers.
The later figure cited by Abbott’s office — more than 474 GW of connection requests in August — also was not current electricity consumption.
Projects in an interconnection pipeline can disappear, shrink, change locations or never be built.
The figures demonstrate the magnitude of prospective demand confronting grid planners.
They do not establish actual present consumption.
Abbott has also moved electricity affordability into his 2026 campaign agenda.
His proposal targets areas served by municipally owned utilities, including Austin Energy and San Antonio’s CPS Energy.
Abbott wants legislation expanding retail electric competition so customers currently served by municipal systems can choose competing electricity providers.
His campaign says introducing competition could lower bills and estimates San Antonio residential customers could save more than 10%.
That savings figure is a campaign estimate.
It is not an established result.
Officials in Austin and San Antonio have disputed the premise that restructuring their municipal electricity systems would necessarily lower customer costs.
Municipal utilities also transfer substantial revenue to city governments, so restructuring those systems could affect municipal finances as well as electricity customers.
The proposal therefore raises at least two separate questions:
Would retail competition actually lower customers’ electricity costs?
And what would happen to city finances if municipal-utility revenue changed?
Neither outcome is established because the proposal has not been enacted.
Hinojosa proposes a different affordability intervention.
Her campaign says that as governor she would direct the Public Utility Commission to freeze the rates residential customers pay until Texas has laws ensuring data centers and other high-load users pay for themselves.
That is more specific than simply promising lower bills.
But it still leaves an important implementation question.
Texas does not have one statewide residential electricity rate.
Depending on location, Texans can receive electricity through competitive retail providers, municipally owned utilities or electric cooperatives operating under different legal and regulatory structures.
The Legislature establishes much of the state’s electricity law, while the Public Utility Commission regulates significant portions of the industry.
The scope of gubernatorial authority to impose Hinojosa’s proposed freeze across those different systems would therefore depend on the legal mechanism used and potentially on legislative or regulatory action.
Her campaign establishes the policy objective.
The legal architecture required to apply it across Texas’ different electricity markets is a separate question.
Not directly.
This is another area where campaign language can obscure the structure of Texas government.
ERCOT operates the electric grid and wholesale market for most of Texas.
The Public Utility Commission oversees ERCOT.
Texas law establishes the governance structure, and the governor appoints PUC commissioners with Senate confirmation, giving the governor significant influence over electricity regulation.
But the governor does not personally dispatch power plants, operate the grid, make ERCOT’s daily operating decisions or directly determine every residential electricity rate.
That distinction matters when assigning responsibility — or credit — for what happens on the grid.
Generation isn’t useful if electricity cannot reach the places where Texans need it.
ERCOT and state regulators have been planning major transmission expansion, including development involving a new 765-kilovolt backbone.
The projects are intended to move large amounts of electricity over long distances and accommodate rapidly increasing demand in major load centers.
The need is being driven by several forces at once:
Population growth.
Industrial expansion.
Generation development.
And enormous prospective large loads.
But transmission infrastructure is not free.
Its cost becomes part of the larger political and regulatory question over who should pay for the infrastructure required to accommodate Texas’ growth.
That question becomes especially important when a single proposed industrial customer can seek hundreds of megawatts — or more — from the system.
A grid can become more reliable while electricity becomes more expensive.
Electricity can also become cheaper during some periods without eliminating reliability risks.
That is why political claims about the Texas grid often talk past one another.
Reliability involves generation availability, reserves, transmission capacity, fuel supplies, weatherization and the ability to balance supply and demand in real time.
A customer’s bill can involve wholesale electricity prices, transmission and distribution charges, retail-plan terms, local utility rates, taxes and fees.
Those are connected systems.
They are not interchangeable measurements.
A politician pointing to improved reliability does not, by that fact alone, establish that household electricity has become more affordable.
And a politician pointing to a higher household bill does not, by that fact alone, establish that the physical grid has become less reliable.
Libertarian Pat Dixon is also on the general-election ballot.
For this report, The Texas Public Record reviewed Dixon’s current campaign material but did not identify a detailed electricity platform addressing the specific issues examined here — ERCOT reliability, large-load interconnection, data-center demand, municipal utilities or residential electricity rates.
That does not establish that Dixon has no views on energy.
It means the campaign material reviewed for this report does not support assigning him positions he has not documented.
TPR does not substitute general Libertarian Party positions for a candidate’s own published positions.
Texas’ electricity system in 2026 is not the same system that entered Winter Storm Uri in 2021.
The Legislature enacted weatherization and reliability reforms after the catastrophe.
Abbott signed them.
ERCOT reports roughly 62,000 MW of new generation resources synchronized between 2021 and 2025, with solar and battery storage accounting for most of that capacity.
Texas is also pursuing major transmission expansion.
But the next challenge is arriving from the demand side.
ERCOT reported in April that it was tracking approximately 410 GW of prospective large-load interconnection requests through 2030, about 87% associated with data centers.
By August, Abbott’s office said ERCOT was considering more than 474 GW of connection requests, approximately 90% associated with data centers.
Neither number represents actual electricity currently being consumed by Texas data centers.
They represent prospective demand seeking access to the grid.
Texas has already responded through SB 6 and new large-load interconnection requirements.
The state response has continued escalating.
Abbott has ordered an audit of data centers moving through ERCOT’s interconnection process, directed TWDB to pursue compliance with water-use reporting requirements and ordered TCEQ to halt data-center permits while the audit proceeds.
On household electricity costs, Abbott proposes expanding retail competition into areas currently served by municipal utilities.
His campaign says that could reduce bills, including estimated savings exceeding 10% for San Antonio residential customers.
Those savings remain a campaign projection, not an established result.
Hinojosa proposes a different affordability intervention.
Her campaign says she would direct the PUC to freeze residential electricity rates until Texas establishes laws ensuring data centers and other high-load users pay for themselves.
She also has called for a broader moratorium on new data centers until the Legislature meets and establishes additional protections.
Those are campaign objectives.
Their implementation would depend on the legal authority available to the governor and state agencies and, where statutory changes are necessary, action by the Legislature.
The candidates are therefore arguing over more than whether the Texas grid “works.”
The record presents several separate questions:
Can Texas build generation and transmission quickly enough for the demand seeking to connect?
How much of the enormous interconnection queue will actually become operating load?
Who should pay for infrastructure required by massive new electricity users?
How far should Texas go in restricting data-center development while those questions are resolved?
And can policymakers reduce household electricity costs without undermining the investment required to serve a rapidly growing grid?
Those questions cannot be answered by pointing only to Winter Storm Uri.
They also cannot be answered by pointing only to today’s electric bill.
Texas has changed the grid.
Now the state is deciding how to finance and expand it — and under what conditions some of the largest new electricity users in its history should be allowed to connect.
Verified through September 24, 2026.
EDITORIAL NOTICE: This report reflects records and information available at publication. Allegations, charges, and disputed claims are not findings of wrongdoing. Submit documented correction or clarification requests by messaging The Texas Public Record on the platform where this article appears. Material errors will be corrected transparently.
The Texas Public Record
Rights. Accountability. Awareness.
The record doesn’t blink. Keep your eyes on Texas.
#TexasGovernor #TexasGrid #ERCOT
Public Money & Accountability
Railroad Commission records show more drilling permits issued in September 2026, even as the number of oil and gas completion reports processed by state regulators remained substantially below September 2025 levels.
Elections & Public Trust
Texas prohibits nearly all abortions but retains defined medical exceptions. Abbott signed legislation clarifying those exceptions while maintaining restrictions on abortion assistance and abortion-inducing drugs. Hinojosa wants reproductive rights restored. Dixon distinguishes his personal opposition to abortion from the use of government power.
Elections & Public Trust
Texas reports more than $10 billion in border-security spending. The federal government has approved approximately $7.5 billion in reimbursement, but the Comptroller said the money had not reached the state treasury as of September 21. The governor’s race raises questions about enforcement priorities, public spending and the boundaries of state authority.