It appears that it’s not just the public that’s eager to see construction get underway soon for that $10 billion Richland Parish Data Center in north Louisiana. So too is the utility company now facing the herculean task of bringing the needed energy to that future data A.I. assisted center, owned by Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta. Entergy is expected to ask members of the Louisiana Public Service Commission to speed up the approval process when the agency reconvenes next Wednesday, August 20, a full two months earlier than initially planned.
As Louisiana Public Radio reports, Entergy has publicly advocated for construction of three new gas power plants and other distribution upgrades to support Meta's Richland Parish Data Center. Meta is offering to cover less than half the cost of the power plant's operations over time. Critics of the mammoth project fear that rushing the process belies unseen, potentially troubling challenges ahead that may not receive enough public scrutiny early enough in a rushed process.
For example, the Union of Concerned Scientists says the proposed fossil fuel infrastructure to serving Meta’s plant, “would span an area of roughly 70 football fields and consume approximately three times as much electricity as the entire city of New Orleans annually.”
The Alliance for Affordable Energy also worries that Meta’s mega data center could further strain Louisiana’s much-maligned electric grid. On January 15 of this year the Louisiana Legislative Auditors Office concluded that state residents live with one of the least reliable electric grids in the entire country yet still pay far higher electric bills than the national average. It’s all spelled out in the report titled, “ “Louisiana’s Electric Profile.” But data center supporters, chief among them Governor Jeff Landry, describe the $10 billion artificial intelligence optimized data center as an investments that represents ‘a new chapter’ in Louisiana history. He points to the creation of 500 or more direct new jobs, with state economic experts forecasting another 1,000 indirect jobs created in the process, along with 5,000 jobs during construction. The 2,250-acre former Franklin Farm mega site sits just 30 miles east of Monroe in Richland Parish, Louisiana.
