About this episode

Chris Powers interviews John McQueeney about the Texas power grid and the implications of data centers on energy policy.

In this episode, Chris sits down with John McQueeney, State Representative for House District 97 in Tarrant County, Texas and member of the State Affairs Committee covering power grid and electric policy. In the last six weeks alone, John's committee has run three interim data center hearings. He is also drafting the Data Center Responsibility Act for the January 2027 session - the bill that will set the framework for how Texas handles the data center build-out for a generation. Texas has 440 gigawatts of applications in the queue against roughly 110 gigawatts of current peak capacity. Someone has to sort out what's real, what's speculative, and who pays for the grid when it all comes online. John is one of the people doing that work. They discuss: Why the data center industry is losing a PR battle it should be winning The tax story hyperscalers haven't been telling How the large load approval process works in Texas, end to end - from TSP submission to ERCOT study to Approved to Energize What's real vs. speculative in the 440 GW pipeline Behind-the-meter data centers as grid stabilizers What the Data Center Responsibility Act will cover The railroad analogy: why communities that…

People in this episode

Host: Chris Powers

Guest: John McQueeney

Topics covered

• Texas power grid
• data centers
• electric policy
• Data Center Responsibility Act
• energy capacity
• grid stabilization

Keywords

• Texas power grid
• data centers
• John McQueeney
• Data Center Responsibility Act
• energy capacity
• ERCOT
• grid stabilization
• hyperscalers
• electric policy

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: House District 97, State Affairs Committee, ERCOT, Lancium, Crusoe, Oracle, OpenAI

Places: Texas

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