BATON ROUGE, La. (March 5, 2025) — Today, Earthjustice filed a motion on behalf of the Alliance for Affordable Energy and the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) asking Louisiana utility regulators to require Meta and its data center developer, Laidley LLC, to share critical information with stakeholders about their recently proposed data center in Richland Parish, Louisiana, or else dismiss a utility company’s application to power the data center with three new gas-fired power plants.
Entergy, the state’s largest utility, submitted the application to the Louisiana Public Service Commission (PSC) to build three, billion-dollar gas plants in Northeast Louisiana to power Meta’s largest proposed data center to date. Meta and Laidley have not previously been required to be parties to the gas plant application, which has obscured essential information the commission needs to determine “whether the Project is in the public interest," states the motion.
The motion seeks to bring transparency to the multibillion-dollar project by requiring both Meta and Laidley to provide foundational information to the PSC, such as anticipated energy demands from the data center, justification for the expedited timeline, and how many local jobs it will create. Formally including Meta and Laidley in the application will also strengthen legal avenues for holding the companies accountable to ratepayers. If Meta and Laidley are not made parties to the application, the motion demands that the application be dismissed.
The motion follows a motion filed last month by the same parties seeking to deny Entergy’s request for an exemption from the state’s request for proposals process. While the administrative law judge deferred ruling on the merits of the motion, Earthjustice, AAE and UCS are continuing their efforts to protect ratepayers from further pollution and potentially massive rate increases that have yet to be disclosed by Entergy’s proposal.
Below is a statement by Logan Burke, executive director of the Alliance for Affordable Energy.
“No single customer should be able to shift billions of dollars in risk to other customers while obscuring critical information about their energy needs. If Meta and its subsidiary are demanding an unprecedented scale of investment, we are asking for straightforward engagement and accountability.”
Below is a statement by Paul Arbaje, an energy analyst with the Union of Concerned Scientists.
“Meta and its subsidiary are trying to hide behind Entergy so they can expedite their proposal to use costly and polluting energy sources to power a massive new data center. Louisianans deserve more transparency from Meta to better understand what’s truly at stake for their communities in terms of grid reliability, health impacts and ratepayer costs.”
Read the full motion here.
Additional resources:
- Beyond the Smokestack, UCS report on gas plant pollution
- Gas Malfunction, UCS issue brief on the unreliability of gas plants during extreme weather
- Powering the Data Boom: How Will the Grid Keep Up?, UCS blog post