In less than two months, Nevada voters will cast their ballots for the next Governor of the Silver State.
Data centers have grown to be one of the hot-button topics in the election.
The two front-runners, GOP incumbent Governor Joe Lombardo and Democratic challenger Attorney General Aaron Ford, are on opposite sides of the topic.
Ford says that once he went on the campaign trail, he heard the community’s concerns.
"They're concerned about the water usage,” he said. “They're concerned about the power being used. They're concerned about, their, their electricity rates being raised. And so my plan responds to all of those."
On Labor Day, Ford shared his plan with 2 News Nevada. One of the first things the attorney general wants to do if elected is pause the tax breaks for the data centers.
"I'm going to pause all abatements going forward, our tax breaks going forward. Our current governor has only failed to uphold his end of the bargain, which was to look at these data centers to see if they were upholding their own end of the bargain."
Ford says he will audit data centers while the tax breaks are paused.
However, the Governor’s Office says that its Office of Economic Development already releases audits of data centers in its biennial reports.
The audits look into capital investment, jobs, and wages.
Other state documents show that about $330 million in Nevada tax abatements were awarded to data center projects from 2021 to 2024.
2025 and 2026 numbers have not been released.
The Governor’s Office of Economic Development awards the abatements.
From 2023 to 2024, under Lombardo’s tenure, about $233 million was awarded in tax breaks.
However, the tax break program stems from a 2015 Nevada Senate Bill from the Legislature, which was sponsored by Ford.
We asked Ford directly about his stance changing in those 11 years.
“Let's be clear, my stance isn't changing,” he responded directly. “My stance is being responsive to what we're hearing about 11 years later. In 2015, the data center then only really dealt with storing items in the cloud."
Ford would most likely need the Legislature to help amend and pause the 2015 bill. He says he will bring everyone to the table, but did not give specifics.
Other parts of Ford’s plan include making sure data centers don’t raise prices for consumers’ power bills and protecting water usage.
We asked NV Energy more about data center impacts on the Nevada electrical grid.
“Currently, NV Energy has requests for service totaling approximately 22,000 megawatts of new demand, far exceeding anything previously contemplated,” the company sent in an email. “For context, Nevada’s total peak electric demand in 2025 was about 8,500 megawatts, meaning current requests represent nearly three times the state's peak load.”
NV Energy says it’s working to make sure data centers pay for their own energy usage so it does not fall on consumers.
The company has not responded to our question of whether customers are currently paying for data centers’ energy.
For the six Reno data centers, the Truckee Meadows Water Authority says once all six are fully operational, water usage will total about 20 to 22 acre-feet (AF).
For context, TMWA says its system uses about 90,000 AF a year. So, at least in the Reno area, it’s a drop in the bucket for total usage.
Lombardo told us back in May he “wholeheartedly” supports data centers, because he felt they didn’t drastically draw on resources.
He said he would no longer support it if that was not the case.
The Lombardo-supported Political Action Committee, Better Nevada PAC, has received $2 million in donations from people connected with data centers.
That includes Jessica Roy, wife of Rob Roy, who is the Founder of Switch. She donated $1 million. The other $1 million comes from Benjamin Horowitz and his wife, Felicia. Benjamin is an investor and supports AI and data centers.
