Principals, Developers Plan Hyperscale Data Center in New Mexico  

Originally published on Forbes.com on January 8, 2026

Project Jupiter is one of five tentacles of Stargate, an enormous high-tech enterprise. But it hasn’t been smooth sailing for developers, state regulators, and local residents. 

Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar system. Project Jupiter is a hyperscale data center planned to be built in the deep south of New Mexico. These are massive facilities often employing 5,000 or more servers to handle data, AI, and cloud workloads.

Jupiter developers are trying to handle issues about water supplies in a desert location, and about electricity sources that don’t increase costs to consumers and also don’t destroy the advances the state has made in reducing carbon emissions over the past decades.

In the small border town of Santa Teresa, in Dona Ana County, New Mexico, a massive data center began construction in September. County commissioners approved industrial revenue bonds to the tune of $165 billion, an enormous amount of financing for Project Jupiter. But it hasn’t been smooth sailing for developers, state regulators, and residents.  

Stargate Project.

It all began the day after Inauguration Day when Donald Trump was sworn in as president. The chiefs of the tech industries were there. At that time, a small Chinese company released DeepSeek, an AI model that spooked markets. 

The next day, tech titans Sam Altman, Larry Ellison, and Masayoshi Son showed up at the White House to pledge $500 billion to build AI data centers across the U.S.—a project called Stargate. The message foretold “global competition, astounding innovation, massive sums of money, and the alchemizing forces of public and private interests.”

At the very top of the Stargate Project is a national partnership between OpenAI and Oracle. But Project Jupiter in New Mexico is just one of many hundreds of data centers planned across the U.S.

Project Jupiter Plans.

Santa Teresa will be one of five gigantic computer facilities across the U.S. that are earmarked for training in AI technology. The buildings at Santa Teresa will include four data centers. business offices, and microgrids that produce electricity. Microgrids are power-generating facilities separated from utility grids. They have been approved by the New Mexico legislation passed earlier this year. Initially, the microgrids would burn natural gas in turbines and store power in large-scale batteries.

Physically, how large are these places? Two other companies are looking at New Mexico for data centers that would be 3,500-8,500 acres or 5.5 – 13.3 square miles, so these data centers occupy vast tracts of land.

Who are the developers? BorderPlex Digital Assets is the main developer at Santa Teresa. Their presentation to Doña Ana County commissioners in September led to approval of $165 billion in industrial revenue bonds to finance the project. It was stated that the microgrid would generate 700-900 megawatts (MW), but ranging up to 1000 MW or 1 gigawatt (GW), of power in its first phase.

Job Benefits.

A big positive from Project Jupiter is jobs. A metadata center in Los Lunas, just south of Albuquerque, employs about 400 workers. Another positive is increased tax revenue for local governments. But Jupiter will also help to diversify industry in New Mexico, where the dominant industry is oil and gas (wellhead revenue is a massive $28 billion per year in a state that is No. 2 in oil production).

However, there are concerns from regulators, policy watchdogs, and residents of Las Cruces about water supply to cool the data center computers, and carbon emissions from gas-fired power plants that provide electricity. Because it takes a lot of electricity to run a data center!

Plan For Water.

Data centers require enormous volumes of water to cool the computers that run much hotter than desktop computers. Gas-fired power plants use even more water than computer cooling, and much more than solar or wind renewables. The water used is commonly good quality drinking water, although some plans call for closed-loop circulation of brackish water. The large volumes can strain water supplies in desert regions.  

Project Jupiter, near Las Cruces, is in the Chihuahuan Desert, and experiences less than 10 inches of rain per year. So water usage in data centers is a special issue in such drought-prone areas.

Plan For Electricity.

In November, Acoma LLC, which is affiliated with BorderPlex Digital Assets, disclosed for the electricity supply two separate microgrids and four standard gas-fired turbines, each 700-1,000 MW. This upped the ante to 4 GW of total power, using the larger number. Acoma submitted applications for air quality permits. This raised red flags about carbon emissions and other gas pollution. The state responded by the Environmental Department (NMED) requesting more information. 

In a series of public meetings held in the Fall, the complaints came out. First was the extra carbon emissions from gas-fired microgrids. How would this affect Governor Lujan-Grisham’s Energy Transition Act (ETA)? New Mexico has done well in reducing electricity emissions toward net-zero by 2045. Could emissions from the two gas-fired microgrids cancel the gains made in the past two decades?

Environmental attorney David Baake wrote, “We reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 13.5 million metric tons between 2005 and 2024. This power plant would emit 12.7 million metric tons, essentially putting us back at square one in the fight against climate change.” For comparison, Albuquerque, which is the state’s biggest city, emitted 5.8 million metric tons of carbon gases in 2017.

But it’s not only about carbon emissions. Sulfur dioxide comes from power plants that burn gas, and these can combine with other chemicals to form particulate matter, which can cause respiratory health conditions. Acoma is seeking permits to emit a combined 55 tons per year of sulfur dioxide.

Nitrogen oxides (NOx) are estimated to be just below 250 tons per year from each microgrid. These are cherry-picked numbers because the EPA limit is 250 tons per year for each stationary emitter. It’s a red flag because the two microgrids source the same data center, and will be just over one mile apart, so where the emissions merge, the total will reflect effectively 500 tons per year. NOx also damages the respiratory system, especially in asthma and shortness of breath.

Adding Renewables To The Mix.  

In late December, BorderPlex Digital Assets made another presentation to the state about adding renewables to the mix of electrical power. Project Green, as it’s called, plans to interrogate renewable developers, which would lead to proposals. The goal of Project Green is to install 500 MW by 2028 and 1000 MW (1 GW) by 2032.

This is an attempt to meet the requirements of the governor’s ETA, which says electricity sources must be made up of 50% renewables by 2030. But the numbers don’t seem to add up. The Jupiter plan for electricity, from above, is 4 GW of total power (upper limit). The ETA mandates 50% of power, meaning 2 GW, to be from renewables by 2030. Project Green would install 750 MW by 2030, which is only 38% of the ETA mandate of 2 GW. Could Jupiter be made an exception? A state law enacted this year stated that microgrids may be temporarily exempted from the 50% renewables law.

Cost. 

DNV reported recently on the costs of new-build power sources to meet the demands of data centers and AI. Solar and onshore wind remain the cheapest sources: Solar cost is 62% and onshore wind is 75% of gas-fired turbines in 2025, based on LCOE calculations. Battery storage systems (BESS) are accelerating as they make solar and wind more dispatchable. By 2040, BESS will grow by 25 times the incipient 0.07 TWh in 2024.

Concerns Of Residents.

These are largely environmental concerns about water use and climate impacts, but certainly include rising costs for electricity. Some other U.S. communities are fighting back. In early December, 200 environmental groups sent a letter to Congress urging a moratorium on building new data centers. From New York to Alabama, residents have protested data centers in their areas. One of the pleas in the letter to Congress was to stop building until “adequate regulations can be enacted to fully protect our communities.” This is an outpouring of emotions in response to the rush of federal AI policy to beat China to develop generative AI, manifested by the Stargate Project of half a trillion dollars in investment, for example.