On Thursday’s broadcast of the Fox Business Network’s “Varney & Co.,” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) defended the state’s data center moratorium and responded to a question on if there is a danger of falling behind China on AI by saying that “that’s an American issue. It’s not a Texas issue.”
Abbott began by saying, “I have a moratorium on any new data centers in the state of Texas. Also, I established guidelines and guardrails that all data centers must comply with if they expect to do business in the state of Texas. For one, they must not take water that’s needed by local communities, for another, they must not take electricity that’s needed for a power grid, they must operate in a way that actually lowers the cost of electricity for customers around them, and they must not disturb our neighborhoods or our rural settings across the entire state of Texas. They have to follow guidelines and guardrails if they expect to do business in the state of Texas. The good news is that, by and large, this is a standard that has now been universally adopted across the state of Texas. And so, we are in full compliance with all of these businesses here, and we expect that full compliance to continue.”
Host Stuart Varney then asked, “Is there a danger that Texas falls behind China on AI because of the moratorium?”
Abbott answered, “So, listen, with regard to China, that’s an American issue. It’s not a Texas issue. What’s important is that, for Texas, we be able to listen to and work with our local community. Let me just give you a very quick example: And that is, I got involved in this when there were local residents in East Texas, near a lake that a data center was going to build and obstruct their view of the lake and interfere with their way of life there. It doesn’t matter if it’s China or Russia or whoever that may be involved in this process, data centers cannot go into neighborhoods like that by a lake and just destroy the setting of the people around there. Here is what is incumbent upon data centers to do: They have to go and work with local communities. They’ve got to get buy-in by the local communities if they expect to do business in the state of Texas. And the problem, the reason why they are behind the 8-ball here is because they didn’t do their homework. They didn’t go try to build support in the local community. And so, they are getting the backlash that they deserve.”
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