A Chevron Texas Power Plant Seeks School District Tax Break
Key takeaways
- Chevron subsidiary Energy Forge One has filed an application with the State Comptroller’s board to obtain a tax abatement for a power plant it’s building in West Texas.
- The potential tax abatement for the project comes as big tech companies are battling rising public fury about data centers and electricity costs.
- “Microsoft is in discussions with Chevron,” Rima Alaily, Microsoft’s corporate vice president and general counsel for infrastructure, said in a statement to WIRED.
Why this matters: a development in AI with implications for how people work, create, and decide.
Photograph: Hugo Kurk/Getty Images Comment Loader Save Story Save this story Comment Loader Save Story Save this story. A major oil company is seeking a state tax break in Texas worth hundreds of millions of dollars to build a massive power plant. The energy won’t be going to residential customers, though. Instead, the gas plant will be used to power a data center whose eventual tenant could be Microsoft.
Chevron subsidiary Energy Forge One has filed an application with the State Comptroller’s board to obtain a tax abatement for a power plant it’s building in West Texas. In late January, the comptroller’s office made a recommendation to support the application’s approval—the first such approval under the program for a power plant intended solely for data center use.
In March, following news reports that Microsoft was looking into purchasing power from the Energy Forge project, Chevron said that it had entered into an “exclusivity agreement” with Microsoft and Engine 1, an investment fund involved in the project. In January, Microsoft pledged to be a “good neighbor” in communities where it is building data centers, including promising to pay a “full and fair share of local property taxes.”