Texas senators say they hope to tighten data center water regulations in 2027

“I believe many [data center developers] are good actors, but as always, there are bad actors,” Perry said. “I will mention specifically by name the one that I have dealt with in my district today. ... Beacon is not a good actor. They choose not to answer their phones; they choose not to communicate on local levels; they choose to operate in secrecy. And for that and that alone, as of today, [I will do] whatever I need to do to keep them from [building] wherever they're going.”

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Three data center developers testified during the hearing, telling lawmakers they were committed to using water resources responsibly, pouring money into local communities and covering their own infrastructure costs.

“You guys are talking about giving a tremendous amount of money back to communities,” Sen. Roland Gutierrez, D-San Antonio, told the developers. “We’ve got a whole bunch of people coming to Texas—over 377 of these entities—and y'all may be the best actors out there.”

The developers who testified represented Google, which has data centers in Midlothian and Red Oak, plus three more facilities planned for 2027; Lancium, a company based in The Woodlands with three West Texas facilities; and QTS Data Centers, which has campuses in the Dallas-Fort Worth and San Antonio areas.

Those companies said they largely use closed-loop cooling systems to maintain safe temperatures in the server rooms at their data center campuses. Closed-loop systems recirculate cooling fluids and cool air inside a “sealed loop,” allowing facilities to use less water than some other types of cooling systems.

“Water cooling is only considered if local water resources are healthy and resilient, and in locations facing threats of scarcity or depletion, we look for alternatives like air cooling or reclaimed water,” said Ben Townsend, Google’s head of infrastructure and sustainability. “All of our planned data centers in Texas ... are conscientious of limited community water resources and are designed with advanced closed-loop air cooling systems that will help us eliminate freshwater consumption for cooling.”

In June, Gov. Greg Abbott asked lawmakers to consider requiring that all new data centers be built with water-efficient technology, including closed-loop systems. Ryan Kuithe, senior vice president of facility operations for QTS, suggested that lawmakers should “not force just closed-loop, and leave it open-ended and more focused on water usage, and not directed at a specific technology.”

By the numbers

Of 102 currently operational data centers surveyed by the PUC, 15 of them reported using evaporative cooling systems, which rely on the natural evaporation of water to lower air temperatures in a data center’s server room. Evaporative cooling uses less energy than other cooling options, but significantly more water.

“What we found in the data is that operational facilities using evaporative cooling technologies reported disproportionately high water intake,” said Chris Brown, the PUC’s data analysis program manager. “These facilities represented less than a fifth of the sample examined, but they accounted for nearly half of the total reported water intake.”

Another 65 facilities said they used non-evaporative methods, such as closed-loop cooling, while 22 data centers reported using another type of cooling technology, per a PUC presentation.

“Most operational facilities in this data set report using non-evaporative cooling technology systems, and nearly all planned facilities expect to adopt them, suggesting future growth may be less water-intensive overall,” Brown said.