Wednesday, 23 September 2026

New Era Energy & Digital has signed a 20-year power agreement covering 200 MW to 207 MW for the first phase of its Texas Critical Data Center near Odessa, according to a Yahoo Finance report.

Deliveries under the contract are expected to begin in the third quarter of 2027. Once power starts flowing, Vistra will receive a 5% non-voting interest in the entity that holds the PPA-backed portion of the site.

New Era shares jumped about 30% in morning trading following the announcement.

Victoria's new data center rules will not apply retroactively to existing facilities or to applications already under assessment, according to ESS News.

Facilities covered by the plan will not be permitted to operate off-grid, ESS News reported. Operators must also participate in demand flexibility services "to the maximum extent commercially and technically possible," a phrase ESS News noted was left without further detail.

Researchers in Pennsylvania are studying whether abandoned coal mines could host new data centers, according to Inside Climate News. The state has become a hot spot for data center development, and the research frames the mines, an older environmental hazard, as a possible site solution.

Penn State researcher He and colleagues analyzed 5,586 abandoned mine sites across Pennsylvania and found that 160 contained mine pools large enough to accommodate data centers, Inside Climate News reported. The underground pools could cool the facilities without drawing on outside water sources.

Inside Climate News notes a working precedent in western Pennsylvania, where a former mine has housed a data center since 2013.