Fort Bliss Data Center, Fort Bliss, Texas

The U.S. Army is planning a data center complex on 1,384 acres of Fort Bliss, Texas, to be financed, built and run by the Carlyle Group, which the Army conditionally selected in March 2026 to enter exclusive lease negotiations. By 2029 the Fort Bliss complex in far East El Paso would need 3 gigawatts of electricity, more than El Paso Electric's entire generating capacity of about 2.9 gigawatts, Deputy Undersecretary of the Army David Fitzgerald said.

The project is part of the Army's Enhanced Use Lease program, which followed an executive order by President Donald Trump directing agencies to help data center projects; the February solicitation pointed to 50-year leases. The Army wants about 100 megawatts of computing running by late 2027, which Fitzgerald said means construction must begin soon. "AI is a strategic asset for the Army," Army Secretary Dan Driscoll said when the selection was announced. The Army says the developer will build its own behind-the-meter power and water systems, and that the Army Corps of Engineers will conduct an environmental review.

Almost everything about how it would be powered and watered is still open. Army officials called combined-cycle natural gas turbines the "most likely" power source, which would add large amounts of carbon dioxide and particulate pollution in central El Paso. El Paso Electric said the Army has made no formal request for service and that whether the complex connects to the grid is still under review. The Army's own solicitation rates El Paso's water risk as "extremely high", and even water from Fort Bliss wells would come from the Hueco Bolson aquifer, the city's main source; Fitzgerald has promised the facility will be "water neutral" without saying how. A Carlyle representative at a community meeting did not answer questions about the facility or its power source.

The complex would be the third giant in the region, after Meta's $10 billion data center in Northeast El Paso and the $165 billion Project Jupiter campus Oracle and OpenAI are building in Santa Teresa, New Mexico. El Paso Electric has asked Texas regulators for a special data center rate with a 20-year contract term and cash security, and said its projection of new data center demand does not include Fort Bliss. On July 20, 2026, the El Paso City Council unanimously adopted data center rules requiring a special permit with a council vote, 300-foot buffers from homes and plans for water, energy and emissions, but the rules do not apply to the Fort Bliss project on federal land. "Before, we didn't have any power," Mayor Renard Johnson said of the new framework.

The decisions on Fort Bliss rest with the Army and Fort Bliss leadership: the Army must still finalize a lease with Carlyle, and El Paso Electric says questions about power will be decided by Fort Bliss leadership. As of July 2026, El Paso Matters reported, the Army had shared virtually no information about the project since unveiling it in April.