In the panhandle of Texas, a company is planning to build a massive gas-fired power plant and four nuclear reactors to supply energy for a data center complex – all dubbed the “President Donald J. Trump Advanced Energy and Intelligence Campus.”

The project near Amarillo is planned by Fermi America on land owned by Texas Tech University, one of the partners. The company was co-founded by former Governor Rick Perry, Trump’s Energy Secretary during his first term, and would power an 18 million square foot data center campus. 

The proposed power generation “hypergrid” – which would include solar  – would add up to 11 gigawatts, enough electricity to power Manhattan, though Amarillo only has about 204,000 residents. Most of the generation would solely feed the data centers and not provide power for the public electrical grid.

The project joins a wave of companies proposing new gas-fired power plants in Texas and across the U.S., with at least 130 such proposals announced in the Lone Star State alone.  Rising power needs for data centers is a key driver of this demand, with half of the state’s new industrial electricity demand expected to come from data centers by 2031.

The pollution footprint of all these gas-fired power plants is expected to be substantial, with the 130 proposed in Texas expected to emit as much greenhouse gas pollution as 27 million cars and trucks driving for a year. 

Fermi America’s announcement followed Trump executive orders in May that said the federal government should speed up the process of licensing new nuclear plants and add 300 gigawatts of new nuclear power by 2050.

Fermi’s proposal is raising questions about whether it could source enough water to cool its power plants. The Texas Panhandle is a drought-prone area that only averages about 20 inches of rain per year, with dwindling supplies of groundwater that are vital to farmers. 

Fermi America’s application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission states that its nuclear reactors would rely on air cooling and consume less water than about 50 homes. However, last month, some of the company’s leaders told county commissioners that the natural gas-fired power plant part of the project would require between 1.4 billion and 1.9 billion gallons of water per year, according to the Amarillo Tribune.

“Where does this mythical water come from – are they going to make it?” asked Karen Hadden, director of the Sustainable Energy & Economic Development (SEED) Coalition, which has fought other nuclear and coal plant proposals in Texas.

Water scarcity contributed to the planned early closure of the Tolk coal-fired power plant, southwest of Amarillo, by power company Xcel Energy. The company in 2023 moved up the coal plant’s closure date from 2032 to 2028. The plant uses millions of gallons per day of water from the Ogallala Aquifer, a vast but shrinking groundwater source that lies below eight states in the Great Plains.

According to the Amarillo Tribune, Rick Perry’s son and Fermi America co-owner Griffin Perry, and Zane Edwards, director of water resources for engineering contractor Parkhill, told Carson County commissioners that they are exploring using treated wastewater from Pantex, a nuclear weapons site outside Amarillo operated by the Department of Energy. 

Fermi America’s campus would be built on land surrounding Pantex, a site with a long history of pollution that the EPA has designated as a Superfund cleanup site. Part of that cleanup work involves pumping up contaminated groundwater from below Pantex, treating it, and storing it in an irrigation pit for future use.

“So we’re looking at an option that we can utilize that water for cooling also, to help them out,” Edwards told commissioners.

However, Edwards also said that Fermi America might also find a source of slightly salty groundwater, known as brackish water, or treated wastewater being discharged from a planned new wastewater facility by the City of Amarillo.

At the core of Fermi’s nuclear proposal are its plans to build four Westinghouse AP1000 reactors, the most recent design to have received approval  from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Two of these reactors started up at a Georgia Power Co. plant in 2023 – seven years behind schedule and $17 million over budget. 

Fermi America has said it plans to make 1 gigawatt of power generation available by the end of 2026. That is an ambitious timeline that relies heavily on the construction of its proposed natural gas-fired power plant. The plan would also require 200 megawatts of power under an agreement with Southwestern Public Service Company that has not been finalized yet. 

Fermi’s 90 gas-fired turbines, which add up to 6,000 megawatts of electric generation capacity, could release significant amounts of climate-warming greenhouse gas emissions and thousands of tons per year of other pollutants. The company claims it will be America’s “largest combined-cycle gas plant.”

According to its air quality application on file with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, the plant would be capable of producing 23.6 million tons per year of greenhouse gas emissions, comparable to nearly 5 million cars and trucks driven for one year. It would also create 1,075 tons per year of particulate matter, or soot, which can trigger heart and asthma attacks.

The company has been facing skepticism from some analysts. When Fermi America filed for an initial public offering earlier this month, its own filing noted that Fermi does not yet have any anchor tenants for its data centers, nor any permits or infrastructure. The filing states that Fermi is a “a development-stage company with no operating history or historical revenue, and we face execution risk across all major components of our business.”

However, the company does have $350 million in cash under a financing structure led by the Macquarie Group, an Austrian-based investment banking firm. The company has also announced it is in the “pre-approval” process for a loan from the Department of Energy to “finance key components” of its facility, according to E&E News. 

Doris Smith and her husband, local farmers and ranchers who own land next to the proposed Fermi campus, have already heard from surveyors seeking to plot water pipelines and high-voltage electric lines across their land. They worry that the facility’s massive water needs will further draw down dwindling local groundwater supplies.

“The fear is, with as much water as they are going to draw, that it will reduce water to farmers to irrigate their land,” Doris Smith said.

Lead photo: A nuclear power plant and high-voltage transmission lines in Tennessee. Photo by iStockphoto.