Austin County TX data center and BESS moratorium (2026)

Austin County, Tex. — countywide moratorium on ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE DATA CENTERS and BATTERY ENERGY STORAGE SYSTEMS (BESS), approved unanimously by the Commissioners Court on Monday, July 27, 2026. CHARACTER: not an outright construction ban; a pause on approvals to permit county evaluation. SCOPE OF EVALUATION, broader than the standard water-and-power framing: (a) compliance with HEALTH, FIRE AND SAFETY requirements; (b) CYBERSECURITY SAFEGUARDS; (c) ENFORCEMENT MECHANISMS applicable to BESS and data center projects within the UNINCORPORATED AREAS of the county; (d) possible designation of a dedicated ENERGY DEVELOPMENT ZONE for these project types. THE DISTINGUISHING REQUIREMENT — EQUIPMENT MANUFACTURER AUDIT: the moratorium requires prospective developers to submit to the county a full list of all equipment and components proposed for use in the project. This is a SUPPLY-CHAIN DISCLOSURE obligation and is not replicated by any other local instrument in this dataset. Its practical value is twofold: for battery energy storage it is a fire-safety and cell-provenance question, and for computing infrastructure it is a security and component-origin question — a rural commissioners court obtaining visibility that state and federal review would not otherwise give it. BESS COVERAGE IS DELIBERATE: battery storage is routinely co-located with or built to serve large computing loads, and a moratorium naming only data centers leaves the storage build permissible (compare Woodford County KY permanent data center ban (2026), which also reaches battery storage). TEXAS SEQUENCE: San Marcos was the first Texas CITY to adopt such a rule (2026-06-30); Hill County was the first COUNTY; Austin County was the second county. Hood County REJECTED a data center development pause in February 2026.