Big Things Are Happening, El Paso!

Today, Meta is thrilled to confirm the El Paso Data Center will grow to 1 gigawatt.

We are increasing our investment in El Paso to more than $10 billion and will now support more than 300 jobs at the data center once completed. Our construction needs will also grow and we now anticipate that over 4,000 construction workers will be onsite at the peak of construction. Job opportunities for the data center will be on the Meta Careers page. For construction information and opportunities, please visit the website for the general contractors — JE Dunn and Hensel Phelps.

Since breaking ground last year, we have been proud to call El Paso home and are committed to being a good neighbor.

We are thrilled to announce a $500,000 grant that will support a new workforce development effort in partnership with El Paso public schools. This partnership will help students explore rewarding careers ranging from STEM areas to the trades by connecting them with practical, real-world learning experiences through programs that expose them to career pathways and in-demand skills. In addition, we will launch our Data Center Community Action Grants program this fall — an annual program created to address local needs by putting technology to use for community benefit, enabling people to build strong, sustainable communities, and improving STEAM education. Meta is also proud to bring programs to Texas that help local small businesses and nonprofits grow their reach, such as our no-cost digital skills training.

We remain committed to minimizing the environmental impact of our data centers. When it comes to water, we prioritize water stewardship and our goal is to be water positive in 2030, where Meta will restore more water than we consume globally. For El Paso, we will restore 200% of the water consumed by the data center to local watersheds.

We are excited to share that our DigDeep partnership we announced in October is delivering results. Over 100 homes in El Paso will have clean, running water for the first time in the near future due to our partnership. We are also collaborating with the Bonneville Environmental Foundation on new water restoration projects that will provide irrigation technology to local farmers that will help them minimize water withdrawal, save energy and reduce costs. It will also restore millions of gallons of water per year. In addition, we are building out capacity with partners like the Frontera Land Alliance and Texan by Nature to support further development of water stewardship solutions delivering benefits to communities across the El Paso area. And we continue to partner with Texas Water Action Collaborative / Texan By Nature to help expand and catalyze other water restoration partners and projects in El Paso. These efforts bring us to a total of eight water restoration projects across Texas.

On the operations side, as we shared last October, we plan to use a water efficient closed-loop, liquid-cooled system that recirculates the same water and will use zero water for a majority of the year. To put that into perspective, our water use is projected to be similar to a typical golf course in west Texas. We’ve partnered with El Paso Water to ensure our full site buildout remains within our existing water and wastewater service agreement.

We’re committed to being a positive contributor in communities like El Paso, and that includes investing in new clean energy. We have worked closely with El Paso Electric from the beginning to plan for our data center energy needs and ensure we are paying the full costs for the energy used by our data centers so consumers are not negatively impacted. We also plan to add enough clean and renewable energy to the El Paso grid to match 100% of the electricity use of our data center. As of today, Meta has energy projects across Texas adding over 5,000 MW of new clean energy. In El Paso, we have also invested more than $8 million in local infrastructure improvements, including road infrastructure, and we pay the full costs of water and wastewater service. We’re also funding emergency water utility assistance through El Paso Water’s AguaCares program, helping families in the El Paso area with their water bills.

We couldn’t be more proud to call El Paso home and excited to be part of this community. Thank you to Borderplex Alliance, El Paso schools, El Paso Water, El Paso Electric, City of El Paso, El Paso County, JE Dunn, Hensel Phelps, DigDeep, and all of our community partners for their ongoing support.

Follow our El Paso Data Center journey