Greg Abbott is the Governor of Texas, in office since January 2015, and a Republican. In AI policy his actions run along two tracks: signing the state's principal AI statute, which takes a lighter-touch approach than Colorado's, and using executive direction over the state's electricity regulators to condition data-center grid access on disclosure.
AI legislation
Abbott signed the Texas Responsible Artificial Intelligence Governance Act (TRAIGA, HB 149) in 2025. The statute is regulatory in form but narrower than the Colorado AI Act, turning on intent-based prohibitions rather than a duty of care over high-risk systems, and Texas is generally aligned with the federal preemption posture described at State-Level AI Regulation.
Data-center grid access
On August 3, 2026 Abbott halted approvals for data centers seeking connection to the Texas grid, directing the Public Utility Commission of Texas and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas to audit projects advancing through ERCOT's interconnection queue before any are approved. His letter asks the agencies to require developers to disclose tax breaks received, power use and generation, water use and cooling operations, efforts to reduce impacts on local communities, and facility ownership, and states that any project failing to comply "must be denied connection to the Texas grid" (Source: texastribune.org).
The stated basis is the scale of the queue and the low response rate to an earlier survey. ERCOT is tracking more than 1,800 projects representing over 474 gigawatts, more than five times the grid's record peak demand, and Abbott said approximately 90% of new power requests come from data centers. Of the 377 companies PUCT staff said it notified in a survey measuring water and power usage, 28 submitted responses. ERCOT paused its "batch zero" review the same day. Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller, a fellow Republican, called the directive "all hat and no cattle — empty political rhetoric wrapped in meaningless fluff."
The action is an interconnection-conditioned disclosure requirement rather than a statutory moratorium of the kind Maine's legislature passed and its governor vetoed in April 2026, and it comes from a state whose AI-regulation posture is otherwise deregulatory. See Data Center Siting / AI Power Politics.
Relationships
- related: Texas Responsible AI Governance Act (TRAIGA / HB 149) — the state AI statute he signed.
- related: Data Center Siting / AI Power Politics — the August 2026 interconnection audit.
- related: State-Level AI Regulation — Texas's position among state approaches.
- regulated-by: n/a — Abbott acts through the Public Utility Commission of Texas and ERCOT rather than a state AI regulator.