Meta Agrees to Fund Local Energy Infrastructure for Louisiana Data Center — Update

By Nicholas G. Miller

Meta Platforms agreed to a deal with Entergy Louisiana through which it will pay for new energy infrastructure to support its massive data center in Northeast Louisiana.

Meta will fund seven new natural gas power plants totaling more than 5,200 megawatts, 240 miles of 500 kilovolt transmission lines and battery energy storage across three locations.

Meta also committed to help fund up to 2,500 megawatts of new renewable resources and agreed to a memorandum of understanding to explore the future development of nuclear power.

Entergy said the deal would ensure Meta pays its full cost of service and would deliver about $2 billion in customer savings over 20 years.

The $27 billion data center project currently under construction in Richland Parish, La., will be Meta's largest ever data center, potentially scaling up to 5 gigawatts. Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg has said the site will be "so large it would cover a significant part of Manhattan."

The project will bring money, jobs and local tax revenue. But it has raised concerns about burdening Louisiana electricity customers with the higher costs of additional energy infrastructure, especially if demand from Meta eventually dries up, The Wall Street Journal previously reported.

Across much of the country, the rapid buildout of energy-hungry data centers has led to taxed grids and surging electricity prices, prompting calls for tech companies to provide for their own energy needs.

At a White House event earlier this month, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Meta, Oracle, OpenAI and Elon Musk's xAI agreed that they would cover the cost of power for their data centers and invest in the power grid and the communities hosting their facilities.

But industry analysts have said the pledges were short on details and accountability mechanisms and may not lead to quick changes at the local level, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Write to Nicholas G. Miller at nicholas.miller@wsj.com.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

March 27, 2026 10:07 ET (14:07 GMT)