It seems like every week there are new developments with what's going on across the nation for data centers! I know I've stated before in the past that I primarily try to keep an eye towards the federal level, but at the state level, there are so many exciting things that are happening that it makes it hard to keep an eye out for everything.

Last week, Governor Abbott out of Texas ordered the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT) and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) to audit all data centers wanting to connect to the state’s power grid. It’s a moratorium until regulatory agencies can audit proposed data centers seeking connection to the grid in Texas. It remains unclear how long the audit will take, but details that need to be confirmed include:

It was an unexpected move that caught a lot of policy folks, including myself, off guard, considering Texas is forecasted to be one of the biggest data center markets in the country by 2030. So far, the data center industry has reaffirmed various commitments on behalf of companies to make sure that the projects that are in the queue fulfill those expectations from what I have seen on LinkedIn.

Which state do you think will be the next one to pull a moratorium card?

Chau 👋,

Nate

Data Centers vs Drinking Water: What Matters To Us Most? (AI & Water Resources): With the government quietly categorising data centres as 'critical infrastructure', could we ever be in a situation where data centre water supply is prioritised over the water that comes out of our taps? Why do we not have clear data on just how much water data centres use? And why are so many being built in areas which are already water stressed?

The Data Center Exchange: Building Trust in Data Center Development with Mara Ervin (AI & Data Centers/Hardware): A Harper Harrison podcast exploring the key topics shaping the data center industry. In this episode, Del Connolly is joined by Mara Ervin, Director of Data Centers at Stonebridge, to discuss one of the biggest challenges facing digital infrastructure today: community engagement.

20 Gigawatts in Orbit: Starcloud's Plan for AI Compute (AI & Data Centers/Hardware): Philip Johnston, co-founder and CEO of Starcloud, walks through the company building data centers in space. In November 2025 they launched an Nvidia H100 into orbit and trained the first large language model in space, and have since raised $200 million and filed to deploy 88,000 more satellites.

The significance of product design in the circular economy: A sustainable approach to the design of data centre equipment as demonstrated via the CEDaCI design case study (AI & Data Centers/Hardware/Model): A proposed sustainable server design developed as part of the CEDaCI (Circular Economy for the Data Centre Industry) project, built on the EU Circular Economy Action Plan 2020. It offers good-practice recommendations for futureproofing data centre equipment design. Authors: Kerwin et al. Journal: Materials Today: Proceedings.

Collective Goods but Local Harms: How Data Centers Can Earn Community Support (AI & Social/Economic Impacts): A compromise framework that localizes certain data center benefits for communities while continuing to build more data centers, aiming to find the right mix of benefits and costs by balancing local and collective harms. Authors: Brennen and Mohammed. Journal: NYU Center on Tech Policy.

Machine Learning-Based Power Quality Prediction in a Microgrid for Community Energy Systems (AI & Energy): A comprehensive comparative evaluation of nine predictive architectures for estimating power quality parameters, supporting the shift toward renewable energy sources to cut CO2 emissions from conventional thermal and nuclear facilities. Authors: Jahan et al. Journal: Energies.

Key Considerations for Data Center Development (AI & Infrastructure): A guide to the core trade-offs shaping data center development. Authoring Body: Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC).

Compass Datacenters Community Report 2026 (AI & Infrastructure): Compass Datacenters' 2026 outcomes report on its community and development impact. Authoring Body: Compass Datacenters.

Drained by Data: The Cumulative Impact of Data Centers on Regional Water Stress (AI & Water Resources): An analysis of how data centers collectively add to regional water stress. Authoring Body: Ceres.

CCU Webinar Series: What is 'net positive water'? The case of Intel and Meta (AI & Water/Ocean Resources): Professors Josh Lepawsky and Melissa Gregg explain how high-tech companies do the math when they report water use, and ask what 'net positive water' really means.

Aspen Ideas: Climate | Powering the Machine: Data Centers and the Electricity Appetite (AI & Energy): Data centers are now the fastest-growing load on the US grid. This panel digs into how large customers should connect and pay for infrastructure, and whether the buildout creates lasting benefits for host regions.

We mapped every data centre on earth (AI & Energy): Drawing on the IEA's latest analysis, this film uses first-of-its-kind satellite tracking to map the global data centre buildout, and finds capacity has doubled in twelve months.

Uravu Labs (AI & Water Resources): On a mission to make human life more sustainable through breakthrough water technologies, believing the water industry is ripe for innovation. Location: Asia.

NetworkOcean (AI & Data Centers/Hardware): Ocean data centers, a new frontier of data center performance and sustainability at planetary scale. Location: North America.

Runware (AI & Data Centers/Hardware): AI-as-a-Service at 5-10x lower cost and higher speed than competitors, having powered 4 billion+ creations for 100K+ developers and 250M+ end-users worldwide. Location: North America.

TESSERA Zarr Explorer (AI & Geospatial Analysis): Explore satellite embedding datasets directly in the browser, switching between analysis modes using the tabs. Price: FREE.

Hourly Model Inputs (AI & Energy): Hourly timeseries for power system modelling. Click a country to inspect its profiles and download a full year of hourly data as CSV, provided for the EC-Earth3 (ECE3) climate scenario.Price: FREE.

alp-data (AI & Biodiversity/Ecology): A Python package providing access to 35+ bioacoustic datasets behind one unified interface, covering birds, marine mammals, primates, insects, anurans, and multi-taxon benchmarks. Price: FREE.

If you have resources that you wish to submit to the AI & Environment Resource Hub, fill out the Google Form! Thank you for suggesting resources to add to the Resource Hub. 🙃

Found this during one of my LinkedIn escapades! 🫣

Thanks for reading the 53rd issue of The Climate Code! It means a lot to me and we have more coming in the future, so definitely stick around! 💚

Nate

PS 😁

New here? I would recommend checking out Data Center Battlegrounds (our YouTube channel focusing on the environmental impacts of data centers) and also the AI & Environment Resource Hub itself.

PPS 😆

If you’re feeling EXTRA GUTSY, connect with me here on LinkedIn! Say hey 👋.