What can go wrong? It turns out that even as Meta boosts its data center investment in northeast Louisiana, for residents there may be higher electricity rates and fewer police officers around.
Almost a year ago, Meta announced land deals aimed at plunking down a center in Richland Parish. Since then, it has bought almost as much land again and raised its cost estimate for the project, known as Hyperion (in the original Greek, “he who watches over”), from $10 billion to $27 billion.
As part of the arrangement, Meta pledged to draw a significant portion of its power from renewable sources, perhaps eventually as much as five gigawatts from all sources after starting out needing about one GW. Five GW would power over a million homes.
To pursue this goal, this summer Meta signed a deal with Ouachita Parish’s Lafitte Run project for 100 megawatts, and recently inked a deal to have 385 MW more delivered from sites in Sabine and Morehouse Parishes. It also has contracted with Entergy Louisiana for the utility to provide 1.5 GW in future years.
Boosters crow about how the solar farm deals will add to tax coffers and produce jobs. What they don’t tell you are the monetary benefits dwindle considerably after a short while and that the solar output doesn’t go directly to Meta, instead connecting to the grid that means Entergy and perhaps other providers will have to build extra compensating supply that eventually ratepayers will have to cover.
Most of the tax revenue gains will come in the construction phase with workers and needed supplies. But after the farms are up and running, they employ almost no one with little local expenses. And the payment-in-lieu-of-taxes contracts for these, while bringing in higher property taxes than the existing agricultural uses, won’t be close to a bonanza.
And as solar is an unreliable purveyor of energy, to feed Hyperion’s constant massive appetite other fossil fuel-based deliverers will have to be built to take up periods of slack. These additional costs will be passed on to all consumers unless the Louisiana Public Service Commission intervenes to ensure only Meta covers those costs, as Louisianans shouldn’t have to pay for the affectation of the head honchos at Meta who believe in the myth of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming.
Consumers already likely will have to pay more in rates because of the need to enhance the grid to handle the electricity generation increase that Hyperion will require, although that increased capacity will benefit all ratepayers and therefore is justifiable. On the flip side, Meta and its contractors are providing other infrastructure improvements such as with roads.
Next year the area's District 5 Democrat Public Service Commissioner Foster Campbell will be succeeded because of term limits. While Campbell has backed the Hyperion project to the hilt, he also voices support for more expensive per unit renewable energy. He needs to work to ensure Meta shareholders and users, not Louisiana ratepayers, foot the higher bill and those running to replace him must pledge to do the same.
Plus, smaller jurisdictions in particular and their residents/taxpayers may see more money having to go to public safety and/or fewer officers on patrol. Already, smaller municipalities are reporting that the demand Meta has for security services is forcing vacancies and/or higher personnel costs onto them, such is the increase in demand for people with law enforcement backgrounds. Meta would do well to institute a program that attracts out-of-region individuals to meet its security needs or to seek employment with local law enforcement.
Hyperion is a big win for the area and the state, but policy-makers must ensure that the people don’t subsidize politically-fashionable climate alarmism as well as provide leadership to address other costly externalities from it.
No comments:
Post a Comment