Data centers in Socorro County, New Mexico: 1 project mapped

1 project tracked

1 stopped or paused

1 moratorium or ban in effect

Imagery: Esri, Maxar

Stopped or pausedBigger dot, more power1 site shown

Socorro County has no zoning, so when a developer proposed the largest data center in New Mexico on land outside town, residents went to every public body that would listen. In March 2026 Jason Bak, chief executive of Green Data, told the Socorro Electric Cooperative board he wanted to build a 2-gigawatt data center powered by a 10-gigawatt solar farm on 10,000 acres west of Socorro Peak and north of Highway 60, on land owned by New Mexico Tech, El Defensor Chieftain and DCD reported. A public records request later showed the university had signed a non-binding letter of intent on Jan. 5 for a 99-year ground lease of roughly 16 square miles with Aetherion Inc., on whose behalf Bak signed; it also mentioned 200 megawatts of small modular nuclear reactors, which Bak said had since been dropped. Bak said the project would draw water from the air through atmospheric water generation rather than from aquifers, Source NM reported.

Residents doubted it. "There's just nothing concrete that this man has done," Val Thomas, who runs the Facebook page Concerned Socorro, told KRWG. Source NM reported that Bak and Green Data had never built a data center and that several of his earlier ventures, including a solar-powered crypto mine proposed in southern Illinois, never got off the ground. About 100 people attended a May 15 New Mexico Tech Regents meeting and more than 200 a town hall on May 19; Sergio Garza, a data analyst at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, told the regents the heat load would equal "about three Hiroshima bombs a day." The Village of Magdalena passed a resolution opposing the project on May 11, a petition gathered more than 4,600 signatures, and U.S. Rep. Gabe Vasquez urged the county to act.

On June 2 New Mexico Tech President Michael Jackson said the university would not proceed, citing the lack of contiguous land, the difficulty of due diligence on so large a project, community concerns and the lack of data from a comparable facility, though he left the door open to a revised proposal. On June 9 the Socorro County Commission unanimously adopted a one-year moratorium on data centers and related infrastructure on unincorporated land and began forming a Blue Ribbon Committee to recommend regulations; County Manager Joe Chavez chose 15 members from 35 applicants. "We really appreciate you guys. You listened to us, you acted," resident Jon Hertz told the commission. Bak spoke during public comment, saying the data center would generate $50 million a year in local economic impact at full operation and that "we're not other projects all across the country."

The moratorium runs to June 2027. What the committee will recommend, and whether Green Data will return with a smaller proposal, is not known.

Data center projects on record in Socorro County

Grouped by the town each site sits in. The report above may name projects that have no record here yet.

Socorro1

Project	Company	Status	Power
Green Data CenterSocorro	Green Data / Aetherion Inc.	Cancelled	2,000 MW

Where this comes from

The reporting above was written from these. Open one and check it yourself.

Moratoriums and bans in effect

Pauses on new data centers covering this area.

Place	Type	Started	Ends
Socorro County	Moratorium	Jun 10, 2026	Jun 10, 2027	Record off site ↗

Every project above is drawn from public records, filings and local reporting. Each row links to what it is based on. Statuses change, so check the source date before you rely on one. Found something wrong? Write to [email protected] and it gets fixed.