SpaceX Asks Its Own Company Town for a Tax Break on a $24 Billion Gas Plant and Supercomputer - on Land That Slipped Past Brownsville's Data Center Moratorium
The 444-acre Starbase tract left Brownsville's limits in August, weeks before Brownsville's 90-day data center pause took effect. On December 9, a three-member commission - two of them SpaceX executives - votes on the abatement, and in January a governor-elect who campaigned against data centers takes office.
SpaceX wants to build a $24 billion gas-fired power plant and supercomputing facility at Starbase, and it wants a property tax break from the city it built to do it. A City of Starbase public hearing notice says the company "proposes to construct, own, and operate a gas-fired power plant and super-compute facility" on roughly 444 acres between Boca Chica Boulevard and the Port of Brownsville, Teslarati reported Wednesday. The $24 billion figure covers only the initial phases, with room for future expansions - and it is the notice's estimate of the investment, not the value of the tax break, whose size and length the notice does not disclose. The Starbase City Commission takes up the abatement and a related economic development agreement at a 7 p.m. hearing on December 9.
The land's recent history is the story inside the story. Over the summer, SpaceX asked Brownsville to remove the tract from Brownsville's city limits, offering $220 million for water and wastewater projects in return. Brownsville approved the move in August, and Starbase later annexed the land. Brownsville's own 90-day pause on data center applications took effect last week - had the tract stayed inside Brownsville, Teslarati notes, the project likely would have needed a different home. The commission that will judge the request has three members; two of them, Politico reported, are SpaceX executives.
The power plan is already in front of state regulators. SpaceX has applied to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality for air permits covering 35 mobile gas turbines producing roughly 750 megawatts. Generating its own power lets the facility skip the Texas grid - Governor Greg Abbott paused new data center grid connections in August pending an audit - but the air permit still has to clear the TCEQ, where Abbott has also ordered a halt on data center permits. And the political ground shifts in January: Governor-elect Gina Hinojosa, who unseated Abbott last week, has said she will block data center approvals until the Legislature passes new protections, and has already asked state officials to hold off on any sale of Boca Chica State Park to SpaceX until she is sworn in. Elon Musk's first reaction on X after the election was a sentence that read like a shrug and a threat at once: "Data centers in space looking pretty appealing right now."
The scale explains the fight. SpaceX ended the third quarter with 1.7 gigawatts of nameplate compute, is targeting 2.5 to 3 gigawatts by the end of this year and wants at least 10 more gigawatts in 2027 - demand that has to live somewhere, on the ground, for now. Local reaction in the Rio Grande Valley is split along predictable lines: the South Texas Environmental Justice Network has announced a protest citing air quality, water use and energy bills, while some Brownsville residents told the Texas Tribune they welcome the jobs. SpaceX did not respond to the Tribune's questions. December 9 in Starbase City Hall is the next date that matters - a small room, a three-member commission, and the largest single computing bet in Texas.
