NRG Energy said on Monday it would acquire power generation assets from energy infrastructure investment firm LS Power in a deal valued at $12 billion, as the U.S. utility bets on surging electricity demand, sending its shares up more than 17% in early trading.

LandBridge has plans to build a 1-gigawatt data center hub alongside solar and power infrastructure — a massive opportunity to capitalize on the rising demand for compute power driven by AI and cloud growth.

There's a massive, $1 billion data center being developed over 131 acres in North Texas. An even larger, 50,000-acre plot near Laredo is slated to host a data center. Out in West Texas, the $500 billion Stargate Project is probably the biggest tech project in the entire Lone Star State. Add another big-time tech project to the pile. Tract, a data center developer out of Denver, Colorado, announced May 7 that it had purchased a 1,515-acre parcel of land northwest of Lockhart in Caldwell County, Texas.

From West Texas to global LNG markets, top U.S. operators are embracing strategic partnerships, low-carbon innovation, and diversified energy solutions to meet rising demand from hyperscalers and industrial tech players. The Permian Basin may soon become ground zero for the convergence of hydrocarbons and high-performance computing.

To address growing power challenges, legislators are considering Senate Bill 6, a wide-ranging measure that proponents say would strengthen the power grid, boost accountability for large consumers and better protect residential customers from outages. Critics said SB 6 could negatively affect public safety and hinder new economic development in Texas.

“The ultimate depth and duration of this current price environment remains unclear,” said ConocoPhillips chairman and CEO Ryan Lance in the earnings call. “We are playing the long game.” And this was said before the China deal.

While this article appears to be an AI-written promo and is a bit disjointed, there is a nice list of data center and bitcoin projects happening in Texas and elsewhere.

US independent power producer Talen Energy is considering pivoting away from colocated power agreements with data centers. The decision follows the rejection of a plan to power an Amazon Web Services (AWS) data center behind-the-meter from its 2.5GW Susquehanna nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania.

A small West Texas town on the east edge of the Permian Basin, Abilene, Texas, has become the epicenter of a groundbreaking development in the United States’ energy landscape by building the nation’s first small modular reactor (SMR). The project, spearheaded by a collaboration between Abilene Christian University and local stakeholder Natura Resources, marks a pivotal moment in the transition to advanced nuclear energy deployment in the US.

The flagship site for the OpenAI Stargate data center project is currently under construction in Abilene, Texas. The initial phase includes two buildings totaling 980,000 square feet and over 200 MW of power capacity. This phase is slated to be energized in the first half of 2025, setting the stage for subsequent GPU installations.

This allows the co-located data center to use electricity from the wind facility during periods of excess generation, thus helping alleviate an already congested transmission area.

Powering data centers is one possibility.

With the increase in data centers and the need for additional electricity resources to meet growing demands, natural gas could play a key role.

Tech companies are eager to grow the technology but doing so means they need two things built very quickly, data centers and the energy infrastructure to power them. The question utilities, regulators and customers across the country are asking is who is on the hook to pay for that?