Meta is building what would be the world’s largest data center in north Louisiana. (Rendering provided by Meta)
Gov. Jeff Landry announced on Monday a major data center expansion in Richland Parish that he said positions Louisiana to lean into the “next industrial revolution.”
“The next generation of economic growth will not simply be measured in barrels of oil or tons of steel,” Landry said at the Baton Rouge announcement of the expansion of the Meta data center in rural, northeast Louisiana. “It will be measured in electrical generation, megawatts, computing power, energy capacity, and the ability to build the infrastructure that powers artificial intelligence.”
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, is increasing its investment into the massive from the estimated $28 billion to $50 billion, according to the announcement made Monday by Landry and the company’s executives. The facility will be one of the largest data centers in the world, Landry said.
The site expansion will lead to a doubling of the construction jobs to build the facility ( up to 7,500), permanent high-paying positions at the center (up to 1,000) and other indirect employment growth in the Mississippi Delta region, Landry said.
Meta was lured to Louisiana, in part, by large tax breaks offered to the company in exchange for its data center business.
“Without Gov. Landry, this investment would not have been possible,” said Dina Powell McCormick, a former Trump administration official who became president and vice chairman of Meta at the beginning of the year.
“Louisiana is the envy of every state,” she added. “Richland Parish is an awfully special place here in Louisiana, and it is becoming a role model for the country.”
The Meta project is one of several data centers in the works for Louisiana. Other high-profile sites include a set of three data centers in the Shreveport area for Amazon and one in West Feliciana Parish under development from a company called Hut 8 known for bitcoin mining.
The facilities are mostly going to areas of Louisiana that have often felt left out of economic booms.
“I told people from North Louisiana that we were going to bring economic development in,” said Landry, recalling his days campaigning for office in 2024. “They really just thought I was another one of the politicians running for governor that was lying.”
Richland Parish has traditionally been one of the poorest communities in Louisiana and the California company’s involvement has brought unmatched investment to the area. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX.
Louisiana Delta Community College is set to receive $5 million from Meta, said the school’s chancellor Justin Hoggard in an interview Monday. It will be the largest donation the institution has ever received.
Some Richland Parish teachers also received a bonus this year of over $50,000 thanks to the extra local sales tax revenue generated by Meta. Typically, they receive a bonus of around $10,000, according to local news reports.
“What people do not understand is this affects our retirement,” said Scott Wilcher, the head football coach and history teacher at Mangham High School, at the Meta announcement in Baton Rouge. “My retirement, because of the bonus, has just doubled.”
Data centers come with potential risk as well, however. Critics worry that they will drive up utility bills for the communities where they are located because they use a massive amount of energy that requires additional infrastructure. The facilities also consume water resources, which could put communities at risk.
Landry said they have worked with executives at Entergy Louisiana, one of the state’s main power companies, to ensure that citizens won’t pay for the infrastructure needed to support the data center. The energy plan approved by the Louisiana Public Service Commission a few months ago won’t need to be adjusted, said Louisiana Economic Development Secretary Susan Bourgeois Monday.
But Logan Burke, with the Alliance for Affordable Energy, an advocacy group for affordable power, said it’s unclear how much energy the Meta facility will ultimately require. The organization believes the project could require an amount of energy that is equivalent to what it takes to power Manhattan.
“There are so many questions that these kinds of announcements drum up,” Burke said in an interview Monday.
“One of the concerns we have had from the beginning is how little information the consumers and the regulators have into how these facilities will operate,” she said. “The true scale of this is simply unknown.”
In response to concerns about the data center’s water consumption, Landry said water use has already gone down at similar facilities across the country and will be fixed by the private sector and “capitalism.”
“There are some data centers that are using less water than a crawfish farmer uses on his farm here in Louisiana,” Landry said.
Reporter Elise Plunk contributed to this report.
Courtesy of Louisiana Illuminator
