The Dallas Morning News takes a comprehensive look at the data center industry as Dallas claims the title of the world’s No. 1 primary data center market, surpassing Atlanta and Northern Virginia. DataBank CEO Raul Martynek is among the industry voices featured, providing historical context on how data centers evolved from office “computer closets” of the late 1990s into the indispensable infrastructure powering modern digital life.

Texas now hosts an estimated 465 data centers, with 184 operating in Dallas-Fort Worth alone. The state is projected to surpass Virginia by 2030 to become the world’s largest data center market. Data centers contributed $65.8 billion to Texas’ GDP in 2024 and directly created more than 103,700 jobs, according to a PwC study prepared for the Data Center Coalition.

The article addresses energy and water consumption directly, noting that the average data center now requires 700 to 800 megawatts of power and that nationwide energy consumption for data center computing could reach between 446 and 818 billion kilowatt-hours by 2050. On water, the piece acknowledges growing concerns in water-strained Texas while noting that data centers are moving toward closed-loop cooling systems that recycle water rather than consuming it through evaporation — a shift DataBank has already made across its portfolio.

Read the full article at The Dallas Morning News.