It’s not as important that another Republican Gov. Jeff Landry win tamped down discord among some over data center spillover costs, but that it deflated the rearguard action conducted by climate alarmists.
Already having set the stage with his recent executive order that said costs passed on to power and water consumers as a result of data center creation and expansion had to be matched by benefits conveyed to consumers in other ways, Landry received an assist from his ally Pres. Donald Trump upon the latter’s Ratepayer Protection Pledge recently drawing the signatures of heavy hitters in the data center universe. Governors also were invited to sign off, and Landry assuredly did that which crept a bit more forward than his executive order.
Essentially, the pledge says entities involved will not pass along exclusive data center added costs to the general public. All major Louisiana power utilities have signed it as well as a number of entities building, overseeing, and operating, or planning to do so, data centers in the state. A framework to restrict this already exists with the Public Service Commission, although a dissident Democrat on it claims this should occur more specifically.
Deploying this framework seems inevitable with the additional public pressure that Landry and Trump have placed on the issue. Concerns had arisen about the two biggest power providers, Entergy Louisiana and Southwestern Electric Power Company and whether they would try to offload solely data center expenses onto ratepayers. A consultant has tagged an Entergy PSC filing for a generator purchase as due to the Hyperion project near Monroe being something that could be passed along, and a similar scenario could occur as SWEPCO is snapping up or converting to gas generation sites due to an increase in its parent company’s American Electric Power’s expansion of data center servicing.
That seems off the table with the pledges signed by both companies involved, who in doing so know they have put themselves under a microscope and would face punishment should any deviation happen. That should satisfy consumers, who will expect the PSC to veto any actions contrary to do that. (The New Orleans City Council, which regulates power provider Entergy New Orleans, is poised to restrict the size of data centers, ensuring minimal to no such activity within Orleans Parish.)
Yet this isn’t enough for the climate alarmism crowd, such as the leftist special interest group the Alliance for Affordable Energy. Its top officials keep calling the latest evidence of consumer protection meaningless or even disingenuous to Louisianans, as a method of trying to keep troops rallied against data center power provision approval not on their terms.
But their terms are infused heavily with climate alarmism. They don’t so much object to costs passing through to consumers as they do to the build out concentrating heavily on increasing fossil fuel – mostly gas – generation capacity that violates their ideological imperative. Because of this sudden demand increase, combined gas cycle turbine building costs have hit a 15-year high – except that when factoring in dispatchability these costs on average still are below the cheapest renewable source, and especially when removing subsidies, so to save ratepayers the most it makes sense that providers have headed in this direction. These activists know rapid renewable source generation can’t hope to keep up with demand and at a price lower than gas, so what the market won’t do for them they want government to impose.
So, understand that opposition to data centers from these folks on the basis that consumer costs will rise really is an attempt to manufacture fellow travelers to put political pressure on curtailing centers as a method to burn less in the way of fossil fuels. Don’t be fooled by these Luddites who leverage mythical catastrophic anthropogenic global warming into empowering government at the expense of people.
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