States Must Stop Data Centers From Undoing Climate Goals

New Mexico and the City of El Paso each spent millions on plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Three data centers under construction on their border could erase the progress.

As ProPublica reports, two of the projects, Oracle’s Project Jupiter in New Mexico and Meta’s data center in El Paso, are building their own power plants that together could emit up to 10 million tons of greenhouse gases a year. The region around El Paso released 8.4 million tons in 2019. A third, larger data center is planned at Fort Bliss. Together, the three could emit as much as more than two million cars do in a year.

Neither climate plan accounted for any of it. Because the projects sit in two states, regulators have reviewed them separately. Texas doesn’t require developers to report greenhouse gas estimates in air permit applications, and it approved the Meta power plant’s permit in 20 days. New Mexico passed a 2025 law that lets large off-grid facilities generate their own power from fossil fuels, exempt from clean energy requirements for 20 years. Lawmakers who voted for it say they didn’t grasp what it meant for data centers.

The companies say they will offset their emissions with clean energy projects elsewhere, and Oracle has promised net zero by 2031. Local climate plans can’t be built on promises, and the region’s temperatures are already rising faster than almost any other U.S. city.

Add your name to demand that states require full greenhouse gas disclosure in data center permits, count data center emissions in their climate plans, and end exemptions that let new data centers run on fossil fuels without meeting clean energy standards.

A climate plan only works if the biggest new sources of pollution are counted in it. States have the power to make sure they are.