Meta, the parent of Facebook and Instagram, is planning to build a massive data center in a struggling parish in northeastern Louisiana — and power it with a $3.2 billion expansion of natural-gas-fired generation.
New Orleans-based Entergy is requesting approval from the Louisiana Public Service Commission to build almost 2,300 megawatts of electricity to serve the $5 billion data center project. Meta was identified as the customer in press reports Tuesday and confirmed by PSC Commissioner Foster Campbell in an interview with the Shreveport Times.
“This is the best news we’ve had in North Louisiana in a long, long time,” Campbell said Wednesday during a commission meeting in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, without naming Meta. “I’m for it 1,000 percent.”
Entergy’s proposal to build three combustion-turbine gas plants to power the data center would represent a 25 percent expansion of its existing generating fleet.
