Facebook operator Meta Platforms is upping the ante on its El Paso data center complex.
It plans to expand on its original plan, announced in late 2025, and spend more than $10 billion on a complex with 11 data center buildings that eventually will need up to 1 gigawatt, or 1,000 megawatts, of electricity — almost equal to the generation capacity of El Paso Electric’s largest power plant, the Newman Generating Station.
The 11 buildings will have 3.7 million square feet of space, the size of three Cielo Vista Malls.
Last October, when Meta officially announced it would put a data center in El Paso, a Meta official indicated that expanding beyond the project’s $1.5 billion, two-building first phase was likely.
The expanded complex is to employ 300 people in operational jobs once it’s completed, and provide more than 4,000 temporary construction jobs at the peak of construction, according to Meta’s announcement. The first phase was to have about 100 permanent jobs, a Meta official said in October.
The El Paso Times received details of the expansion from Meta before its announcement on Thursday, March 26, during a luncheon at the annual Borderplex Alliance’s Global Border Summit in Downtown El Paso. Meta was one of the sponsors of the conference.
Construction of the giant complex is well underway on 1,000 acres near the intersection of Stan Roberts Sr. Avenue and U.S. Highway 54 in far Northeast El Paso.
Meta, which operates Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, is building new data centers to help it meet the growing needs of artificial intelligence, or AI.
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U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-El Paso, said in a press release issued March 25 that as Meta expands its footprint, it needs to be more transparent in answering questions about the project’s electricity and water usage and overall environmental impact.
She sent a letter to Meta on March 25, asking the company to hold community listening sessions and to take part in a town hall with her and officials from El Paso utilities to answer people’s questions about the data center project.
“As Meta enters our community, it is my hope that you are interested in building community trust, which can only be obtained through a transparent process,” Escobar, D-El Paso, wrote in the letter.
Meta’s El Paso project was in the works several years before the official announcement last year. In December 2023, El Paso City Council and El Paso County Commissioners Court approved providing millions of dollars in tax rebates for Meta if it built the data center complex.
Also in December 2023, a Meta-tied company purchased 1,039 acres of vacant land from the city of El Paso for just under $8.5 million for the project. The city had set the land aside years ago in hopes of getting a large manufacturer to locate there, but that never materialized.
El Paso Electric plans to build a $500 million, 366-megawatt power plant next to the data center to help meet part of the complex’s huge electricity needs.
The power plant, to be made up of 813 natural-gas-fueled generators, is to serve solely the Meta complex for the first five years of its operation, according to EPE’s filing with the Public Utility Commission of Texas. Meta will pay the cost of the power plant, EPE said in the filing.
EPE will need other power sources to meet the complex’s eventual need for 1 GW of electricity.
Escobar, in her letter to Meta, said the company’s plan to use a gas-fired power plant to power the El Paso data center complex runs counter to its previous public commitment to use renewable energy for the data center.
In its expansion announcement, Meta officials said, “We are continuing to work with El Paso Electric, as well as energy developers, to add new energy to the grid. We have projects under contract that are adding more than 5,000 megawatts of clean energy to the grid in Texas.”
The announcement did not provide information about the El Paso energy projects.
Escobar said Meta also needs to provide details on how it plans to honor its stated commitment to restore the data center’s water use to local watersheds.
Meta officials have said the complex’s water usage is expected to be low because it will use a closed-loop water system to cool the data center’s computers and servers.
The system “recirculates the same water so that there is no operational water use for a majority of the year,” according to Meta’s expansion announcement.
John Balliew, El Paso Water chief executive officer, has said that the Meta complex won’t be a high water-consuming business.
Vic Kolenc may be reached at 915-546-6421; vkolenc@elpasotimes.com; @vickolenc on X, and @vkolenc.bsky.social on Bluesky.
This article originally appeared on El Paso Times: Meta El Paso data center plan grows to $10 billion, 1 gigawatt complex
Reporting by Vic Kolenc, El Paso Times / El Paso Times
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
