Texas is getting a new booster club for big builds. Headquartered in Houston, the Lone Star Infrastructure Coalition (LSIC) brings together Blackstone's QTS, NextEra Energy Inc., Siemens Energy AG, the Nuclear Energy Institute, power-infrastructure developer Lancium, and Quanta Services Inc., which is the largest US construction company. The alliance is gearing up to push back on mounting resistance to AI and other infrastructure across the state as some communities raise quality-of-life and environmental concerns tied to large data centers and the power generation needed to run them.
LSIC is rolling out an education campaign, meeting residents, mayors and county officials where they are. According to President Jimmy Glotfelty - who previously served as a Texas public utility commissioner and as an official at the US Energy Department - the goal is to make the economic case for projects like data centers and related power assets. As he put it, the goal is to "help expand the workforce, expand the goods and services that Texas produces, and the economic development that all of that creates," adding, "We want to make sure the economic story gets told."
The headwinds are real. According to Data Center Watch, a research initiative operated by AI security firm 10a Labs, 120 data center projects totaling nearly $200 billion were blocked nationwide in the first half of this year. In a state hailed as the "epicenter of AI development" just last year, Republican leaders moved to slow things down earlier this month as pushback and calls of "Not In My Backyard," or NIMBY, mounted in some communities.
In August, Governor Greg Abbott told the state grid operator and the utility regulator to conduct audits of data center proposals before approval, citing the substantial electricity and other resources they require. Last month, Attorney General Ken Paxton announced an investigation into if the water-use reporting requirements are being met by hundreds of data center projects. The politics are live too: Politics are also in play: With the November elections ahead, Abbott is seeking a fourth term, and Paxton is running for US Senate.
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When local pushback ramps up, timelines for data centers and power projects can slip or get reshaped. That feeds into when jobs land, when construction ramps, and how quickly utilities and suppliers scale near you. If a site is in your area, expectations around growth, taxes and public infrastructure may shift as these reviews and investigations play out.
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