New Mexico and El Paso Spent Millions on Climate Plans. Three New Data Centers Could Undo Them. by Diego Mendoza-Moyers, El Paso Matters, and visuals by Paul Ratje for ProPublica and The Texas Tribune Co-published with El Paso Matters and The Texas Tribune October 14, 2026, 6:00 am

New Mexico and El Paso Spent Millions on Climate Plans. Three New Data Centers Could Undo Them. by Diego Mendoza-Moyers, El Paso Matters, and visuals by Paul Ratje for ProPublica and The Texas Tribune Co-published with El Paso Matters and The Texas Tribune October 14, 2026, 6:00 am https://www.propublica.org/article/data-centers-texas-new-mexico-greenhouse-gas-emissions?utm_source=sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=majorinvestigations&utm_content=secondary Officials in El Paso, Texas, and New Mexico spent millions of dollars drafting separate plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But neither plan took into account how the construction of three new data centers could upend climate goals in both places. Three planned data centers near the New Mexico-Texas border will emit millions of tons of greenhouse gas emissions once they are fully built. The facilities are “going to undo a lot of the very expensive and very meaningful work a lot of people are doing,” New Mexico state climatologist Dave DuBois told El Paso Matters. Yet because the data centers are in two different states — and because there is no single federal regulation governing climate change or emissions — regulators have largely considered the projects’ impacts separately. The result is that officials in one state have little say over a project happening minutes away from them.