You may have seen an article yesterday concerning Entergy, the Meta project in Richland Parish and our company’s potential purchase of Cottonwood, a power generation asset identified as part of our overall resource plan to address increased energy demand from all of our customers in Louisiana. It is unfortunate that this story emphasized the opinion of a single consultant’s testimony to speculate about what Louisiana customers, including Meta, will pay for energy as a result of this potential Cottonwood purchase.

Entergy’s recommended purchase of Cottonwood is in the first steps of a detailed and transparent regulatory process that includes information from various sources and expert opinions. Entergy has taken a prudent approach to balancing the Meta project’s benefits with significant protections for other Louisianians using the power grid. Our state’s approach has even been cited by the Trump Administration, among other leaders, for aligning with the best practices of ratepayer protection.

Entergy Louisiana and Meta have been clear with Governor Landry, our state’s policymakers and most importantly, all of our customers that:

1. Meta is going to be paying for grid maintenance and upgrade costs that our residential and small business customers won’t have to pay – saving them more than $2.65 billion dollars over the next two decades and resulting in bills being lower than they otherwise would have been, and
2. Louisiana customers will see a 10% lower storm charge because of Meta’s contributions to the grid, and
3. Billions in new investment, $2.5 billion in new state and local tax revenue alone and 6,500 in new construction and high-paying, high tech jobs for Louisianians will all result for a project that will help place our state in the center of the global race for technological innovation.

The need for this capacity was well established long before Meta expressed interest in Louisiana. In fact, Entergy Louisiana’s 2023 Integrated Resource Plan, which began as early as 2021, was filed to address projected capacity and energy deficits beginning in 2027 and increasing the following years. The 2023 resource plan was presented to the LPSC in May of 2023, more than a year prior to Meta’s December 2024 announcement. Accordingly, Meta’s load was not part of the projections in the 2023 IRP Report.

No single customer is driving this acquisition. This facility is the best option for all Louisiana customers. The demand for power across the state has accelerated consistently and significantly for a number of years – from the needs of residential customers to larger projects in LNG, steel and other industrial and petrochemical development across the state.

Entergy’s agreement with Meta is structured so that Meta covers its own costs, and then some, so those costs are not borne by Louisianans.

This proposal is at a preliminary stage and remains subject to review and approval by the Louisiana Public Service Commission. Our company looks forward to the continuation of this and other regulatory processes as we expand our goal of providing more and better power to ALL of our Louisiana customers.

You can read what Entergy Louisiana provided to The Advocate in response to their questions. You can also find our 2023 IRP here, where pages 37-39 will show projected capacity deficits, well before Meta. Additionally, page 101 will present data assumptions as far back as 2021.