Louisiana Hands Meta a Tax Break and Power for Its Biggest Data Center

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LOUISIANA PLANNING AUTHORITIES have voted to rush through approval for three natural gas turbines to power Meta’s massive new data center in Richland Parish. When it’s done, the 4-million-square-foot facility will require more than 2 gigawatts of energy to run.

On August 20, Louisiana’s Public Service Commission voted four to one to approve the construction of the plants, which will be run by the utility company Entergy Louisiana. The decision was met with criticism from members of the public who testified against Entergy and Meta’s plan, claiming that the process was rushed. They voiced concerns about rising energy bills and water shortages.

Documents viewed by WIRED show that state authorities agreed to grant Meta tax breaks and incentives without the company explicitly guaranteeing any full-time jobs for local workers.

Opponents of the plan were angry about the sped-up approval timeline: Entergy submitted its application in 2024, and the vote originally could have taken place this October, to give the commission’s administrative law judge the chance to issue further recommendations. But Entergy filed a motion to move the vote to August, claiming that some of the parties that had previously opposed the project were now in agreement. The rescheduled vote left no time for changes.

Critics also claim the deal doesn’t include stipulations like a cap on how much Entergy could charge utility customers for the construction of the gas plants and transmission lines in Meta’s data center build-out—a concern as massive AI data centers can cause utility bills to spike. While Meta agreed to finance the first 15 years of a 30-year loan to construct the gas plants, the construction of the transmission line will be paid for by utility customers.

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During the approval vote, Entergy and Louisiana’s economic development officials repeatedly pointed to the projections shared by Meta, which suggest that the project would bring a $10 billion investment and upwards of 300 to 500 well-paying jobs. In its original 2024 application for the plants, Entergy referenced Richland Parish’s low income levels—one in four residents lives below the poverty line—as a reason to authorize the plan.

“There has never been a better time to lift our residents out of poverty. There has never been a better time to give people in our region better jobs,” said Rob Cleveland, the CEO of Grow NELA, an economic development firm representing northwest Louisiana who testified in support of Entergy’s gas plants, at the hearing.

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Meta would need to hire these 500 “full-time” jobs by 2035 if it wants to receive the highest level of tax breaks, an 80 percent reduction on the full amount. It does require the jobs to provide health insurance and says the pay for all jobs should average out at $82,000 a year. The contract also charges Meta an “administrative fee” of $10,000 for every $1 billion it spends in the state.

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The tax exemption agreement secured between Meta and Louisiana officials did not secure any guarantee of local hiring. Litten, with Louisiana Economic Development, told WIRED that separate state tax breaks that all companies in the state are eligible for do require local hiring. They include the Quality Jobs Rebate, which provides a 6 percent rebate on payroll expenses, a program set to replace it called High Impact Jobs program.

Most data centers hire specialists from out of state for the technical jobs, according to Kasia Tarczynska, a research analyst who studies data center tax breaks at the nonprofit Good Jobs First. She says data centers employ a mix of low-skill and high-skill technical workers to manage servers in addition to security guards and maintenance roles. She says that while construction is happening, data centers often hire specialist electricians who travel from state to state to set up servers.

For this reason, she says, Meta is not the only tech company hesitant to guarantee local hiring when negotiating data center contracts. “They know that some of these jobs require skills that people in the local community just don’t have.”

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