A filing with the Louisiana Public Service Commission shows that Entergy plans to build more than 2 GW of natural gas-fired power generation in the state, including a 1,500-MW facility in northeast Louisiana that would provide power for a large Meta data center operation in an area off Interstate 20 in Holly Ridge (Figure 1). Meta is the parent of social media’s Facebook; the company confirmed its intentions in a Dec. 4 news release, saying the data center would represent a $10 billion investment.
Media reports quoted Louisiana PSC member Foster Campbell as saying the data center would be a “godsend” to the poverty-stricken region. The filing with the PSC said the data center would represent an investment of about $5 billion.
The PSC looked at the proposal for the first time at its Nov. 20 meeting. The agency would consider hiring consultants to help commissioners evaluate Entergy’s request. Several groups, including the Southern Renewable Energy Association, have requested to be allowed to intervene. The Large Energy Users Group, which includes industrial power users such as Dow and Chevron, also has asked to weigh in on Entergy’s plan.
The Oct. 30 filing said the data center and the power plant both could be built on a 1,400-acre, state-owned site called Franklin Farms. The filings said Entergy would invest $3.2 billion for the main power plant, along with a separate but related 754-MW gas-fired plant that would be built in southern Louisiana, and transmission lines to serve the facilities.
Utilities and power generators across the U.S., and also globally, are studying ways to provide electricity to supply the energy-intensive artificial intelligence (AI) and data center sector, including keeping coal-fired power plants online. A study earlier this year from the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) said data centers could consume 9% of U.S. power generation by 2030 (EPRI has launched an initiative to create “flexibility hubs” to look at how data centers could be leveraged as grid resources). A report from McKinsey and Co. this year said data centers are forecast to account for as much as 12% of all U.S. power demand by the end of the decade, up from 3% to 4% today.
The International Energy Agency earlier this year said that global data center energy use could more than double from 2022 levels of about 460 TWh to as much as 1,000 TWh in 2026.
Major tech companies such as Amazon Web Services, Google, Microsoft and Meta have been striking deals in several U.S. regions and worldwide for data center operations. Those groups in some cases have asked local governments to allow them to build their own private transmission lines to serve their facilities. POWER research found that Meta would be the first of those groups to host a data center in Louisiana.
Laidley LCC, a Delaware-incorporated group, in July of this year asked Richland Parish officials to consider that group’s request for “Acquisition, construction and operation of a multi-billion-dollar datacenter campus for data processing and storage.” The company said the project, which it calls Project Sucre, would represent a $5 billion investment at a minimum and support at least 300 full-time jobs.
The group this past summer applied for a Water Quality Certification for the project. The group said the application was “for the proposed Project Sucre to clear, grade, excavate, and place fill for the development of a corporate data center campus on over 2,250 agricultural acres located off Hwy 183 and Thomas Rd near Holly Ridge, Richland Parish.”
$5 Billion Investment
Entergy Louisiana in the Oct. 30 letter and application to the PSC referenced “approval of the generation and transmission resources needed to serve a substantial new load proposed for … a customer seeking to locate a large [and economically transformative] facility in Richland Parish, Louisiana.” The document noted the “the project at issue in this Application represents a planned investment by the Customer of at least $5 billion and is expected to employ directly 300 to 500 employees with an average salary of $82,000, in a region of the state that has long struggled with a lack of economic development and high levels of poverty.”
The application requests “certification that the public convenience and necessity would be served by construction and use of three new Combined Cycle Combustion Turbine [CCCT] generators, two of which would be next to the Customer’s selected site in Holly Ridge, Louisiana; a new 500-kV transmission line extending from a substation near Sarepta, Louisiana to a substation near Mt. Olive, Louisiana; and certain equipment upgrades at the 500-kV substation near Sterlington, Louisiana.”
The application also states that “The level of upfront and continuing investment by this one specific Customer is unprecedented, especially in Northeast Louisiana, and the effects from such a massive infusion of financial and human capital will undoubtedly be transformative. The Customer Project at issue in this Application truly has the potential to transform the economic landscape of North Louisiana.”
Floodlight, “an independent, nonpartisan newsroom that investigates the corporations and political interests stalling climate action” according to its website, reported that “Details about the data center are cloaked in secrecy and non-disclosure agreements. But Entergy Louisiana has filed hundreds of pages of redacted documents with state regulators about its dealings with the unnamed company.” The name of the “Customer,” now known to be Meta, was redacted in the filing available on the PSC website.
The application also said the data center operator “has committed to paying for 1,500 megawatts of designated solar and/or solar and storage [“hybrid’] resources” to be deployed in Louisiana. The unnamed data center operator also is “expected to make a substantial contribution” toward the cost of carbon capture and storage at the Lake Charles Power Station, Entergy Louisiana’s 994-MW gas-fired power plant in Westlake (Figure 2). Crescent Midstream in September of this year announced it would “develop and construct an integrated CCS project in Lake Charles, Louisiana capable of capturing, transporting, and permanently storing CO2 emitted” from the Lake Charles plant as part of a $1 billion investment.
The filing said that “With respect to generation resources, ELL [Entergy Louisiana LLC] is proposing to construct three new 1×1 CCCT generators, each of which will have a nameplate capacity of 754 MW for a combined addition of 2,262 MW of new baseload generation. Two of the three generators will be at Franklin Farms, near the site of the Customer’s Project. All of the Planned Generators will be capable of approximately 30% hydrogen co-firing with the capability of supporting 100% hydrogen firing in the future with upgrades, and all will have the ability to incorporate a CCS [carbon capture and storage] component in the future.”
Entergy Louisiana asked the PSC to approve its application within the next 10 months. The utility in the filing said it looked at other energy resources that could provide power to the data center operation, including renewables, but said a gas-fired power plant would need to be built in any case because of the need for a 24/7 baseload generation resource.
The utility did say it “has committed in good faith to attempt to reach commercial terms with a wind developer on a project and to notify the Customer of any potential development opportunities for nuclear and other near-zero or zero¬emission projects could be considered in the future to supply power to the data center.”
Technology companies worldwide are exploring nuclear power as a source of electricity for their operations, including from small modular reactors.
The filing said that costs for upgraded infrastructure not covered by the data center operator would be spread across Entergy’s electricity customers in Louisiana. It noted, though, that the deal as currently constructed “largely insulates [Entergy’s] other customers from paying for the upgrades required” for the data center.
—Darrell Proctor is a senior editor for POWER.
