Overview
- A City of Starbase public notice shows SpaceX proposes a $24 billion gas‑fired power plant and super‑compute facility on roughly 444.45 acres, and the company has applied to state regulators for air permits covering 35 natural‑gas turbines with about 748 megawatts of capacity.
- The land was de‑annexed from Brownsville after SpaceX offered $220 million for city water and wastewater projects, and Starbase later annexed the tract, a sequence that appears to place the project outside Brownsville’s recently enacted 90‑day data‑center moratorium.
- Starbase city commissioners will consider a property tax abatement and an economic development agreement for the project at a December 9 public hearing, a municipal step that could shape local incentives before state decisions are final.
- Local groups have organized protests and cited risks to air quality, water use, and household energy bills, and Governor‑elect Gina Hinojosa’s pledged limits on new data‑center approvals add political uncertainty to the permitting path.
- SpaceX said the Starbase site is part of a larger plan of more than $74 billion that includes a roughly $50 billion campus in Cochise County, Arizona, showing a multi‑state push that mixes on‑site gas generation to avoid grid constraints with different cooling and permitting strategies.