Overview
A 5 GW Islanded Campus Announced Ahead of Any Application
Energy Abundance Development Corp, renamed from Green Hydrogen International and led by founder and CEO Brian Maxwell, announced Data City in March 2025 as the largest behind-the-meter (BTM) data center hub in the world. The plan starts with 300 MW and 1 million square feet in 2026 and grows to 5 GW and more than 15 million square feet of leasable space, designed for direct-to-chip liquid cooling.
Nothing has been built. The first phase has not started, the parcel has not been disclosed, and city and Webb County officials said in August 2026 that they had received no formal data center application. Laredo declined a moratorium that month and directed staff to draft standards for water use, electrical demand, cooling and land use, since the city code already bars uses it does not expressly permit.
| Developer | Energy Abundance Development Corp (Houston) |
|---|---|
| Location | Near Laredo, Webb County (South Texas) |
| Distance from Austin | About 235 miles south |
| Planned capacity | 300 MW first phase; up to 5 GW |
| Leasable space | 1 million sq ft first phase; 15 million+ at buildout |
| Power model | BTM, fully islanded from ERCOT |
| Generation | Wind, solar, batteries, dual-fuel gas turbines; green hydrogen later |
| Cooling | Direct-to-chip liquid |
| Investment | Not disclosed |
| Status | Proposed; no local application as of August 2026 |
Energy model
Gas First, Then Hydrogen From a Salt Dome
The campus is designed to take no power from ERCOT (the Electric Reliability Council of Texas). Dual-fuel turbines would burn Texas natural gas first and shift toward green hydrogen made by electrolysis from dedicated wind and solar, held in a 2 TWh salt-cavern storage system tied to the developer's Hydrogen City project. See Behind-the-Meter Power.
Hydrogen City, announced in 2022, centers on the Piedras Pintas Salt Dome in Duval County, east of Webb County. Its stated buildout is 60 GW of wind and solar feeding electrolyzers and more than 2.5 billion kilograms of green hydrogen a year, mostly for export as green ammonia and fuels through Corpus Christi and Brownsville. Data City would burn that hydrogen on site instead. Data Center Dynamics reported in 2025 that the first Hydrogen City phase was not expected until 2028, and none of it has been built. See Texas Green Hydrogen Hub.
The Laredo basin rates extremely high for baseline water stress, which bears on electrolysis water demand and on Laredo's new standards; see Texas Water Supply Stress.
Deal structure
One Developer Holding Power, Storage and Halls
Energy Abundance would own the generation, the hydrogen supply through Hydrogen City and the data halls, and lease space and power to tenants as merchant colocation. In that structure the hydrogen project is the parent and the data center is its anchor customer, turning an export hydrogen plan into a captive fuel supply. No tenant, chip supplier, equity partner or project financing has been announced.
Among the hub's exemplars, Meitner Energy Center pairs renewables with gas firming and AWS GW Ranch runs off-grid on gas; Data City is the only one planned around stored hydrogen.
Constraints
Outside the Grid Audit, Inside the Permit Hold
Because Data City would not connect to ERCOT, the August 3, 2026 ERCOT audit and the SB 6 (2025) large-load interconnection rules do not reach it. The September 21 order does: the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) has held all data center air and water permits, including those for islanded on-site power, until ERCOT's review ends, expected in mid-December 2026. Gas turbines at this scale need TCEQ air permits, so the hold applies whenever Energy Abundance files. See Texas Data Center Moratorium.
Record
Dataset Record
- Sources
- Energy Abundance Development Corp (PR Newswire), Data Center Dynamics, RGV Business Journal, Laredo Morning Times (via GovTech), KGNS, Compute Atlas, Bracewell
- Last verified
- October 2026