Meta Plans to Deploy 366MW of Modular Gas-fired Units to Support a 1GW Data Center in El Paso, Texas

The 1GW project, which broke ground in October, would be powered by 813 modular generators, slated to come online by 2027. The units are expected to cost $473 million. 

The proposal has also drawn opposition from environmental and community organizations. For instance, the Sembrando Esperanza Coalition, an El Paso-based economic and environmental justice group, has urged the city, county, and local utilities to end their agreements with Meta.

“We were not told that El Paso Electric would be building a power plant powered by fossil fuels,” said Coalition organizer Verónica Carbajal. “To the contrary, we were told that Meta is going green and would rely on renewable energy. When we looked at the contracts ourselves, we realized that was an illusion.”

Some $1.5 billion is set to be invested in the first phase of development. Previous reports suggest there could be up to five phases of development, each totaling around 800,000 sq ft (74,320 sqm).

The site has been designed to support “both the traditional servers of today and future generations of AI-enabled hardware,” and will use a closed-loop, liquid-cooled system that will use zero water for the “majority of the year.”