Just under a year into the Republican Gov. Jeff Landry Administration it’s instructive to see how from night to day went the state’s economic development prospects.
Recently, Louisiana Department of Economic Development Secretary Susan Bourgeois related the process of how Meta will bring billions of dollars of investment to the state in Richland Parish. The technology company snapped up a state-owned site for a data center that will create hundreds of well-paying jobs that will necessitate Entergy Louisiana to build three gas-powered generation sites, two nearby, just to provide enough energy for the complex.
She said not long after Landry’s election Meta came calling, and a years-long process ended up only taking months to complete. Hastening the process was Act 730 passed this year, which exempts data centers creating a minimum of fifty new direct, permanent jobs in Louisiana and involving at least $200 million in new capital investment in the state between Jul. 2024 and Jul. 2029 from paying any state or local sales tax on data-related equipment for 20 to 30 years.
And the hits kept on coming. Only days after the Meta announcement, a bitcoin miner firm called Hut 8 announced it would sink $12 billion into a West Feliciana Parish mining operation, creating a few hundred more jobs. It’s believed that Meta will have a hand in the site on parish-owned land as a tenant, with Hut 8 building its own 300 megawatt power plant that could ramp up to 1 gigawatt, meaning if true that Meta would be drawing upon as much as 3.2 gigawatts of power in the state, or nearly a third of the current total utility-scale net electricity generation in the entire state.
That power generation requirement explains in part why businesses became so interested in Louisiana as soon as Landry took office … or rather, as soon as Democrat former Gov. John Bel Edwards left. Much of the basic conditions for bringing these centers to Louisiana were in place years ago; a relatively lower cost of living, available land, and (as of this summer) the cheapest energy in the country for industrial use, mainly because of the large volume of natural gas extracted from and moving through the state. This space argued often that this combination made Louisiana a natural high-tech hub and that state policy-making should take advantage of these factors and encourage this.
But Edwards allied himself with climate alarmists (and took a job promoting that agenda after leaving office), advocating in office for expensive and largely useless green policies, signaling to the Legislature that he would veto measures that likely would increase fossil fuel consumption and to businesses that they would receive no help if their activities threatened to do the same. His general big government, business-unfriendly economic policies that featured more taxation and regulation more generally discouraged economic development – resulting in fewer jobs and many fewer residents than when he took office and growth behind most states.
By contrast, Landry’s messaging during his gubernatorial campaign of pledging to do the opposite of Edwards unlocked the state’s potential, with subsequent follow-through with his ally Republicans who presently comprise a supermajority in both chambers of the Legislature. The latest special session, that basically or put in place mechanisms to cut all but sales taxes and reduce government impeding commerce, doubled down on that.
Thus, it’s no wonder things are picking up and, more specifically, the state now can use its advantages to attract growth in the most vibrant technology sector. It’s a wonder what the right agenda can do to improve the lives and fortunes of Louisianans.
No comments:
Post a Comment