Entergy Wants to Fast-Track Gas Plants for Meta Data Center, Leaving Ratepayers With the Bill 

August 18, 2025 | 7:00 am
Ezra Acayan/Getty Images
Paul Arbaje
Energy Analyst

Louisiana utility regulators recently made public that they are suddenly scheduled to vote August 20th on a proposed gas plant project by Entergy Louisiana that could have major negative consequences for ratepayers’ wallets. The utility company is seeking approval from the Louisiana Public Service Commission to spend at least $3.7 billion building three new gas plants and associated infrastructure, all to power a city-sized data center planned in Richland Parish by a subsidiary of Meta (Facebook and Instagram’s parent company). 

Before getting into any more details, it’s crucial to say right up top that if you are an Entergy Louisiana customer, you can contact your commissioner here and demand a better deal from this massive gas plant and data center project. If you’re reading this on Monday, you can also attend this community briefing tonight to learn more. Entergy’s current proposal includes zero assurances or protections from the project becoming far more costly than expected—which evidence suggests is likely to happen—and Louisiana ratepayers could be forced to pick up the tab.  

Louisianans’ utility bills would therefore rise, to the benefit of shareholders and executives at Entergy and Meta, which as I’m writing, have market caps of $40.45 billion and $1.96 trillion, respectively (yes, trillion – there are only 11 countries in the world with larger GDPs than this). 

If the Commission approves the current proposal, Entergy Louisiana customers are set to pay for: 

  • Fuel costs for the three new gas plants. 
  • A new $550 million transmission line that Entergy acknowledges wouldn’t be necessary but for the Meta data center. 
  • Costs of the gas plants after the 15-year contract with Meta expires if it’s not renewed. The life of a gas plant often exceeds 30 and even 40 years, and Entergy’s cost estimate for the three plants is $3.2 billion. 
  • Other costs Entergy deems necessary to recoup from customers. 

And those are just the costs that end up on utility bills. There are also grid reliability risks with the data center that could potentially trigger costly power outages, as well as health costs from gas plant pollution. The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) and Louisiana-based Alliance for Affordable Energy (AAE) are opposing this project at the Commission, with legal representation from Earthjustice. The groups on Friday just filed an opposition to this upcoming vote. 

 Let’s get into some more context on how we got here. 

Yet another rushed vote in favor of utility companies 

This vote now set for August 20th wasn’t supposed to happen until the Commission’s October meeting. This has been the plan since October 2024, when Entergy first filed its application. Even then, advocates expressed concern about a project of such significance being put on such a fast timeline. Now, that timeline is even shorter, simply because Entergy asked for it to be shortened. 

This is not the first time the Commission has rushed a vote of significant implications to their constituents, with very little notice to those constituents.  

In April, the Commission limited public participation by only giving 48 hours’ notice that it was voting to terminate a third-party energy efficiency program that was in the works for years. The program would’ve added protections against the current practice of utilities charging their customers for electricity they didn’t use due to efficiency gains. Last year, Entergy filed the final version of a $1.9 billion, ratepayer-funded grid upgrade proposal on a Monday and convinced the Commission to approve it by the end of the week.  

The new vote scheduled for tomorrow was scheduled in a similar fashion, with just over a week’s notice. It was also scheduled before a formal recommendation to the Commissioners was even issued by the Commission judge, who’s been hearing all of the arguments by stakeholders in the case. Further, this regulatory proceeding has lacked transparency and circumvented state-mandated cost saving processes since the beginning. Meta refused to come to the table and answer any questions, and Entergy refusing to fully assess alternative options to the three gas plants, as Commission policy requires

Meta won’t even say whether the jobs created by the data center would be local to Richland Parish, even though the jobs appear to be the main benefit that will supposedly be delivered by this project. Proponents aren’t even claiming tax revenue benefits because Meta is getting extremely generous tax breaks in exchange for choosing Louisiana over other states. 

High gas prices already sending electric bills up 

Before this new vote was scheduled, a lawyer who previously represented the Commission asked in the local paper a question many of us are now wondering: will the Commission protect ratepayers or large corporations? This rushed vote comes at a time when Louisiana ratepayers are paying significantly higher costs than last year, even without the added cost burden that will come from this new gas project. 

Entergy Louisiana customer bills in July were already up 11% compared to July 2024. Louisiana electricity bills across the main utility companies have risen to their highest levels since the price spike of 2022, driven in large part by an increase in gas prices. Gas-fired power makes up more than 70% of the state’s electricity generation, so when the price of gas goes up, so do utility bills. This is much higher than gas’s national share of about 43%. 

Federal data suggest that the 2022 price spike caused consumers in the Southeast regional grid, of which Louisiana is a part, to pay approximately $4.5 billion more for electricity than the year before, an increase of about 70%. Gas prices were the main culprit, as gas exports from the US spiked to make up the supply gap arising from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. 

If Entergy’s application is approved on August 20th, Louisiana ratepayers will be footing the bill for the three new gas plants’ fuel costs, even though the plants are solely being built to power Meta’s data center. Entergy is permitted to pass fuel-cost increases through to its customers, but the level of expected increases in these types of operating costs has been kept confidential for this project (see our  testimony in this blog for a sample of what’s being kept out of public view). 

This gas plant proposal would further lock Louisiana ratepayers into paying for gas-fired power for decades. The Commission hastily scheduled this vote in a time when demand for electricity is rapidly rising due to a host of drivers, data centers being the largest one. The price of gas is forecasted by the federal government to rise to an average of $4.30 per million British thermal units (MMBtu) in 2026, a roughly 19% increase from 2025. By the end of 2026, the forecast reaches $5.40 per MMBtu.  

Louisiana should be phasing down its reliance on gas, not doubling down on it at ratepayers’ expense. A rushed vote to approve this project on August 20th would be a huge step in the wrong direction and set a terrible precedent for utility project approvals, as electricity demand will continue to prompt more proposals for new infrastructure. 

Delay the vote, demand stronger protections 

The Commission should end this recent pattern of rushing votes and delay it until the risks to ratepayers are understood and mitigated. If you’re an Entergy Louisiana customer, you can call or email your Commissioner and tell them to add more protections. They should be looking after you, the ratepayers, not billion- and trillion-dollar corporations. 

  • If you’re reading this Monday, August 18, 2025, you can attend the community briefing tonight with AAE, UCS, and Sierra Club Delta Chapter.