Greg Abbott's audit mandate puts hundreds of gigawatts of data center projects on hold as Texas's grid interconnection queue balloons to five times actual peak demandTexas has a math problem. Abbott’s directive mandates a comprehensive audit of every data center project sitting in the interconnection queue managed by the Public Utility Commission of Texas and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas. By August, the queue had climbed to 474 GW, with approximately 90% of the demand, around 420 GW, attributed to data centers alone. ERCOT’s peak demand of 91 GW was recorded on July 22, 2026, just days before Abbott’s audit directive landed. On June 10, 2026, he directed state agencies to develop mechanisms protecting residential ratepayers from being asked to subsidize the grid infrastructure upgrades that new data centers require.