Data Centers Could Push Texas Nitrogen Oxides Up 136% by 2031

Texas could lose decades of progress cutting air pollution if electricity demand from new data centers is met by its projected grid mix, a new assessment warns. ^[2]

The Houston Advanced Research Center, an independent nonprofit research organization, estimates that power-sector emissions of nitrogen oxides would rise 136% between 2025 and 2031 in that scenario, approaching their 2004 volume. That means more than doubling emissions of gases that help form smog. ^[2]

Published on October 20, 2026, the assessment examines how the electricity supply behind the data-center boom could affect Texas air. Its sharpest finding is that fuel and generating technology can change the pollution outcome substantially, even when the electricity demand being served is the same. ^[2]

"There is a good chance that our children and grandchildren will breathe dirtier air than we did," HARC chief executive John Hall said in the organization's announcement of the findings. ^[3]

The warning adds a public-health concern to the debate over the power demands of AI and other computing services. Burning fossil fuels to run servers can produce pollutants far from the servers themselves, at the plants supplying their electricity. Bringing generation onto a data-center site changes where those emissions originate, and potentially how much is emitted.

What a return to the 2000s means

HARC's grid-supply scenario assumes all new data-center demand is served by the projected Texas electricity mix. Alongside the increase in nitrogen oxides, or NOx, fine-particle emissions would reach their 2006 volume. Emissions of volatile organic compounds would exceed their 2002 volume by 32%. ^[2]

Sulfur dioxide emissions would rise 18%, though they would remain below their 2002 volume. Texas reduced major pollutants between 2002 and 2024, according to HARC. The assessment describes how some of those gains could be reversed over the next five years. ^[2][3]

These pollutants matter in different ways. Nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds contribute to the formation of ground-level ozone, a main ingredient of smog. Fine particles, known as PM2.5, are small enough to travel deep into the lungs. Ozone and particle pollution can aggravate asthma, making the electricity supply a health issue as well as an engineering one.

The historical comparisons concern modeled emissions volumes, not a prediction that every community's air will return to its condition in a particular year. HARC does not estimate local exposure or asthma cases, or assume that every proposed facility will be built. Its model assumes continuous operation at 80% capacity and a single power-generation format for all new data centers within each scenario, whereas actual facilities may operate differently and combine sources. ^[2][3]

The power source changes the result

The largest modeled pollution risk comes from supplying data centers with on-site natural-gas engines. Under HARC's highest demand forecast, those engines would produce more nitrogen oxides each year than all sources in Texas emit today. That is a conditional high-demand result, not a description of current emissions. ^[3]

Pollution controls would reduce that output. Even with controls, however, the engines would emit about two to three times as much nitrogen oxide as grid power, according to HARC. Gas equipment therefore cannot be treated as interchangeable simply because it burns the same fuel. ^[3]

Developers have reasons to consider generating power themselves as electricity demand grows. The Verge reported that Texas had 26 gigawatts of existing and under-construction data-center capacity and that developers were considering on-site generation, including gas turbines. Those figures and development examples come from its reporting. ^[1]

HARC also modeled a lower-emissions option: supply one-third of a data center's electricity from the grid and the remaining two-thirds from on-site solar and wind. It estimated that this combination would cut nitrogen oxide and carbon dioxide emissions by roughly two-thirds compared with grid electricity alone. ^[3]

Across its demand forecasts, power-supply choices could make nitrogen oxide emissions from data-center generation two to 10 times higher than the configuration combining grid supply with solar and wind. The size of that range makes the choice of generation central to the assessment. ^[2]

Even the cleanest configuration HARC modeled adds emissions above its baseline, which assumes no new data centers and extends recent emissions trends. ^[2]

A development decision with a public cost

HARC examined 77 trajectories covering five pollutants, three projections of data-center demand and four power-supply scenarios. Its capacity estimates draw on ERCOT, the Texas grid operator, transmission service providers and BAXTEL. It combined emissions factors from Environmental Protection Agency and ERCOT data with Texas emissions data. ^[2]

That approach tests a set of choices rather than producing one inevitable future. A server facility's electricity requirement is only the starting point. The next questions are what equipment supplies it, what fuel that equipment uses and what pollution controls it carries.

For communities, the concern reaches beyond the price of electricity. Smog-forming gases and fine particles create a route by which the computing boom's costs can extend to people who neither own a data center nor use its services. Assessing those costs requires attention to the power supply alongside the building itself.

HARC energy vice-president Carlos Gamarra said the outcome would depend on power-supply choices made by developers and policymakers. As new facilities take shape, those choices will determine which of the assessment's sharply different emissions paths Texas follows. ^[3]