If you’ve looked at your electricity bill over the last year or so, there’s a good chance you’ve noticed that it’s higher than it’s been the last few years—even if you didn’t use any more electricity. While there are many factors contributing to this piece of the current US affordability crisis, the rising price of gas—which fuels many power plants—is notable among them. And depending on where you live, part of this increase may be due to tech companies like Meta and Microsoft developing massive warehouses of computer servers and other IT equipment called data centers.
Data center facilities are being constructed in pursuit of artificial intelligence (AI) products, and just one of these data centers can consume multiple cities’ worth of power, leading to rocketing demand for new energy sources that can increase electricity bills for everyday ratepayers in often opaque ways.
Yes, you read that right. Wealthy tech companies such as Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon are competing for the “best” AI products, while you and I are subsidizing them through higher electricity bills. To add insult to injury, the new infrastructure for powering these city-sized data centers is poised to be largely polluting energy infrastructure, namely gas-fired power plants. In other words, tech and utility companies are passing some of their costs onto you, increasing their shareholder profits, and further polluting your air as a result.
As regressive an injustice this is, its continuation is not a foregone conclusion. You can demand your state policymakers take action to make tech companies pay for their own power, and that the power be clean instead of polluting.
But without any action from legislators and regulators, communities are at risk of continued harm. One troubling example that offers a preview of what could be coming is in Louisiana. In August, the state approved a plan for powering a huge data center being developed by Meta, Facebook, and Instagram’s parent company. And, like many other states, there are more coming (more on that shortly).
Entergy LA customers are now set to subsidize Meta’s data center costs
On August 20, 2025, the Louisiana Public Service Commission (LPSC)—the state’s utility regulatory agency—voted 4-1 to approve utility company Entergy Louisiana’s proposal to build three new gas-fired power plants and other associated infrastructure, all to power one massive Meta data center facility in Richland Parish. The facility is planned to span an area equivalent to about 70 football fields.
With this single data center slated to consume more than three times the amount of electricity that the entire city of New Orleans consumes on an annual basis, stakeholders weighing in on Entergy’s application urged the LPSC to carefully consider the wide array of risks and not rush its review process. But at Entergy’s urging, the final proposal was put up to a vote months ahead of originally scheduled, and the public was given just over a week’s notice that the vote was taking place. It was an astounding and unjust move, infuriating community members who showed up to the vote to voice their opposition.
The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) and Louisiana-based Alliance for Affordable Energy (AAE) opposed the final proposal, pointing to the hundreds of millions, or even billions of dollars, that could be shifted to other Louisiana ratepayers; unaddressed risks of power outages; circumventions of LPSC’s cost-saving policies and procedures; and open questions surrounding the LPSC’s legal authority to enforce certain agreements between Entergy and Meta.
But Commissioners Eric Skrmetta, Jean-Paul Coussan, Mike Francis, and Foster Campbell all voted in favor of it, against the wishes of community members who showed up to the August meeting to voice their concerns about cost, water, air, and grid impacts. Commissioner Davante Lewis was the only LPSC member to vote against it.
While there was no actual estimate given in the case for expected increases in monthly bills, all Entergy Louisiana customers are now set to pay for:
- Fuel and operational costs for the three new gas plants (details of which are redacted).
- A new $550 million transmission line that Entergy acknowledges wouldn’t be necessary if not for the Meta data center.
- Costs of the gas plants after a 15-year power supply contract with Meta expires, if the contract is 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 (such as cost overruns).
And those are just the costs that end up directly on monthly utility bills, which will become clearer in future proceedings. If power outages ensue from the data center’s significant draw from the grid, or if health damages result from further pollution, additional costs will mount even higher for Louisiana communities.
Your electricity provider could be courting a data center right now
Utility companies across the nation are all in on the current data center boom. For regulated utilities, their business model incentivizes them to build as much physical infrastructure as they can justify to regulators, because those are the projects on which they earn rates of return. Essentially, the more they spend on infrastructure, the more profits they make—and that comes from your utility bills. Regulators, such as the LPSC, can “disallow” certain costs from being recouped through customers’ bills, but the propensity to do this varies by state, and utilities have substantial leverage in arguing that certain costs were “necessary” to incur, since they’re providing a necessary service.
With that, it’s no wonder utility company executives are touting data center growth in their quarterly earnings calls: it allows them to build more power plants and associated infrastructure. Entergy Louisiana’s parent company, Entergy Corp, said recently that it has between 7-12 gigawatts (GW) of data center proposals across its service territories in Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, and eastern Texas. (For perspective, New Orleans’ peak demand in 2023 was 1.2 GW, so adding 12 GW to that would be like adding 10 New Orleans’ worth of peak demand in those states.)
It’s important to note that many of these data center proposals may not actually come to fruition. Tech companies have been shopping around over the last couple of years in different states and different utility territories for discounted electricity rates (in some cases funded by other ratepayers) and quick connections to the grid. This practice results in speculative data center projects and a risk of double-counting, which transmission grid authorities are currently trying to address.
However, even speculative data center projects can significantly raise costs for consumers. In Kentucky, for example, Louisville Gas & Electric got approval to spend $3 billion on new gas plants primarily to meet projected data center load growth that may not materialize. And in western Maryland, ratepayers are expected to pay an extra $18 per month due to recent increases in regional power costs, most of which was attributed to data center growth. Some of this growth is real, but some of it is just forecast, which may be partially fueled by speculative projects.
Regardless, there’s a decent chance your electricity provider is trying to turn those speculative data centers into real ones by working out a deal with tech companies. As Entergy Louisiana’s CEO recently said, “As I like to say, ‘Use all you want, we’ll make more.’”
With the recent LPSC approval setting Entergy up to make an estimated $178 million in new annual shareholder profits, it’s no wonder they want more data centers to come to the state. They want to add more energy infrastructure and they’re evidently okay with it being polluting and extremely resource-intensive. A UCS tool’s estimate suggests that every year, the three recently approved gas plants in Louisiana could collectively spew more than 300 metric tons of toxic nitrogen oxides (NOx), consume about 3,600 Olympic swimming pools worth of water, and emit about 4.8 million metric tons of carbon dioxide. And those latter planet-warming emissions contribute to the risk of overshooting global climate goals, exacerbating Louisiana’s already-daunting climate risks, such as sea-level rise, heat waves, and hurricanes.
You can demand a better future from your state policymakers
Even if AI data centers continue to get built at the eye-popping rates that forecasts are suggesting, there are far better approaches than simply offering a lifeline to the fossil fuel industry, building more gas plants, and pushing the substantial financial risks onto ordinary ratepayers who may never use the AI products.
With better utility planning processes, data centers can act as “flexible” sources of demand, drastically cutting costs by reducing their power consumption just a few dozen hours per year (out of a total 8,760 hours in a year) and allowing themselves to be powered by cleaner resources such as solar and battery storage. This is particularly important as states need to be rapidly scaling up clean energy and phasing out fossil fuels to avoid the most devastating impacts of climate change.
State regulators and legislators can also take action to increase accountability around data center development and ensure tech companies are paying for the increased energy system costs they are triggering. Some states have already made imperfect, but important steps toward reining in data-center-related costs for everyday ratepayers. However, there is much more work to be done to protect ratepayers’ pocketbooks and increase transparency around these projects’ espoused benefits such as jobs, and other impacts such as public health costs and water use.
You can take action at your state utility commission and contact your legislators to demand that tech companies pay for their data centers’ power, and that the power doesn’t pollute your air. You can also call for improved transparency around these planned developments, because tech and utility companies are unlikely to be forthcoming in a detailed manner on their own accord. There’s a healthier, more affordable future than what wealthy tech and utility companies are currently steering us towards, and it’s worth fighting for.