META will essentially pay the electricity bill for the $27 billion mega data center being built in Louisiana. on friday wall street journal The company was reported to have struck a deal to finance the energy infrastructure needed for the project.
Through an agreement with Entergy Louisiana, Metra will finance seven new natural gas power plants, 240 miles of transmission lines and battery energy storage at three locations. The gas plants will have a combined power output of 5,200 megawatts, and the transmission lines will operate at 500 kilovolts.
Additionally, the company will help finance up to 2,500 MW of new renewable resources. It also agreed to a memorandum of understanding for future nuclear power development. The 4 million-square-foot Richland Parish, LA, data center will be Meta’s largest to date. It is currently under construction.
The energy agreement follows a pledge by tech companies including Meta to offset local residents’ rising electricity costs from AI data centres. The companies plan to “build, bring in, or buy the new generation resources and electricity needed to meet their new energy demands, while paying the full cost of those resources.” However, the pledge lacks a binding agreement or any enforcement mechanism.
This change in tone comes in response to growing anger from local communities over the growth of power-hungry and environmentally damaging AI data centres. A December poll found that 60 percent of Americans — including most Democrats, Republicans and independents — support more AI regulation. Just this week, Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez introduced a bill to impose a moratorium on data center construction until meaningful regulations are passed.
We could easily chalk this and similar moves up as Big Tech’s latest attempt to convince voters and executives that it can be trusted to do the right thing without enforced regulations. We’ve seen that movie before.
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