Texas power plants burned their way to 190 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions in 2025, according to Sierra Club analysis of EPA data — more than any other state and more than the next two largest emitters combined. That operating baseline now anchors a growing confrontation over the Trump administration's rollback of greenhouse gas rules for the power sector, a rollback that community organizers in the Dallas-Fort Worth region say will concentrate new pollution around data center-driven generation buildout.

Last month, the administration announced the repeal of certain greenhouse gas regulations for power plants and proposed rescinding the rules that remain. The EPA argues the repealed measures deliver roughly $300 billion in savings and have, in the agency's framing, "virtually no benefit." The scientific establishment contests that characterization. "The evidence for current and future harm to human health and welfare created by human-caused greenhouse gases is beyond scientific dispute," the congressionally chartered National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine concluded in a report last year.

The material stream behind the dispute

For the circular economy sector, the fight is a case study in how energy demand from AI infrastructure translates into extended lifetimes for legacy fossil assets. Texas is planning to add more power plants to feed data centers than any other state, The Texas Tribune reported. Communities hosting coal- and gas-fired units — including plants built specifically to power data centers — will absorb the emissions consequences of that capacity expansion.

The Gen. James Gavin Power Plant, a coal-fired facility in Cheshire, Ohio, remains emblematic of the older fleet that stands to stay online under the deregulatory posture. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, a Trump appointee, told coal industry executives this summer that "many of the items that were on your wish list are now done." Months later, President Trump warned Americans that resisting data centers would leave them "backwards and poor."

Local permitting as the remaining chokepoint

The rollback shifts regulatory pressure downstream to municipal and county land-use decisions. Jaime Perkins, a Dallas-Fort Worth organizer for the Sierra Club and DFW Communities Over Data Centers, describes residents showing up at city council and county commission meetings from Irving to El Paso, and at state agency and legislative hearings, to contest proposed data centers and power plants they say are draining water supplies and degrading air quality.

The results are mixed. In July, a majority of Fort Worth council members called for a data center moratorium, according to the Fort Worth Report — a win for opponents. In the same period, roughly $1.2 billion in Dallas-Fort Worth data center projects moved ahead over community objections, as reported by The Dallas Morning News. Dallas itself lacks a zoning policy tailored to data centers, leaving the city without a purpose-built permitting instrument as proposals accumulate.

Climate exposure compounds the emissions ledger

The regulatory retreat lands on a state already carrying disproportionate climate impacts. North and Central Texas saw months of rain erased by returning heat and drought. The Ross Fire burned more than 90,000 acres in North Texas, coming roughly two years after the state's largest wildfire consumed over a million acres in the Panhandle. The Texas Tribune's reporting on data center power plans and emissions frames the core question: how much new generation capacity, and of what vintage, the state's grid operators will commit to fossil assets before federal rules tighten again — if they ever do.

For industry watchers, the pattern echoes the state's shale-era experience, with residents drawing direct comparisons between the two booms. Perkins argues the rollback functions as a subsidy for the tech and AI sectors, which contend they need new plants and extended operation of existing ones to keep data centers running. Texans, he writes, are already paying more for gas, energy, insurance and groceries while the buildout proceeds.

What happens next

The immediate milestones are procedural. The EPA has opened a public comment period on the proposed rescission of the remaining greenhouse gas rules, and the agency held a public hearing that opponents mobilized around. The Sierra Club is collecting public comments directed at the federal docket. The decisive questions are whether the rescission survives anticipated legal challenge — the repealed and proposed rules rest on endangerment findings the National Academies report reinforces — and whether municipal moratoria, like the one under consideration in Fort Worth, become the operative permitting constraint on data center power demand in the absence of federal carbon limits.