Entergy has big plans for northeast Louisiana. The company has proposed a $3.2 billion project to build a natural gas plant to supply power for a massive new data center.
According to filings with the Louisiana Public Service Commission (PSC), Entergy wants to construct a 1.5GW natural gas plant alongside an unnamed data center operator. The project would be on a 1,400-acre site known as Franklin Farms, which is owned by the state of Louisiana.
Details on the data center are still pretty scarce. According to the Louisiana Illuminator, Entergy has filed numerous pages of documents with state regulators, but many of those have been heavily redacted. Entergy has called the project a “game changer” for the region and is currently seeking PSC approval to start building the natural gas plant within the next 10 months.
To address concerns about emissions, the data center operator has committed to working with Entergy to either build or acquire 1.5GW of solar power elsewhere to offset the emissions from the gas plant. They are also expected to contribute to a carbon capture and storage project at Entergy Louisiana’s new 994MW gas power plant in Lake Charles.
Entergy said it did look into using wind and solar power as an alternative for powering the site, but ultimately decided that a natural gas plant would still be needed as a backup to ensure reliable generation.
This decision is part of a growing trend among data center operators looking to secure natural gas to meet their enormous energy needs. Several US utilities have indicated that fossil fuels are increasingly being considered a practical solution to meet the rising demand for data center power.
Last week, Clair Moeller, president and chief operating officer of Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO), suggested that data centers could consider paying for gas-fired generation as a short-term solution until low-carbon energy sources are more widely available.
In early November, AltaGas CEO Vern Yu said their subsidiary Washington Gas was in talks with customers about using natural gas as the primary power source. According to Yu, the demand is being driven by the rapid growth of regional data centers.
An October report from S&P Global suggested that demand for natural gas to power data centers could eventually reach three to six billion cubic feet per day, as the industry continues to struggle to keep up with power demands from AI-related infrastructure.
