In the flat farmlands of Richland Parish, Louisiana, Meta Platforms is erecting Hyperion, a sprawling AI data center campus that dwarfs anything the company has built before. Spanning 2,250 acres—roughly the footprint of 1,700 football fields—this $27 billion behemoth promises over two gigawatts of compute capacity for training open-source large language models. Construction kicked off in late 2024, with peak workforce hitting 5,000 by mid-2026 and 500 permanent jobs once operational. But power. That’s the real story. Meta isn’t just building servers. It’s funding a parallel energy empire to keep them humming.
Entergy Louisiana announced in March 2026 that Meta would bankroll seven new natural gas plants, adding to three already approved, for a total of ten facilities delivering 7.5 gigawatts—enough juice for more than five million homes. The tab? Nearly $11 billion for the plants alone, plus 240 miles of transmission lines, 2.5 gigawatts of renewables with battery storage, and nuclear uprates at existing Entergy sites. Louisiana’s Public Service Commission fast-tracked the $22 billion package in April, voting 4-1 despite warnings of rate hikes for residents. Fortune called it one of the largest single power requests in state history.
Rachel Peterson, Meta’s vice president of data centers, framed it boldly: “Our Richland Parish data center serves as a symbol of the ambition and scale of next-generation AI infrastructure.” Yet ambition collides with reality. Goldman Sachs forecasts data center power demand surging 50% by 2027 and 165% by 2030 from 2023 levels. Natural gas fills 26% of that gap today, rising to 40% of new needs alongside coal through the decade, per the International Energy Agency. Meta’s deal spotlights this shift, propping up stocks like Entergy, up 25% year-to-date at $113.92 a share as of April 20. The Motley Fool.
But local fallout brews. Construction workers flood Holly Ridge, a town of 1,400, sparking a boomtown frenzy. Tim and Lindsey Allen’s food truck slings brisket and smoked pork to 1,600 daily laborers. Land prices soar. Yet chaos follows: housing shortages, traffic jams, crime spikes. “Something enormous and unfamiliar has landed,” wrote Fortune‘s Sharon Goldman from the soybean fields nearby. Residents fear bill shocks. Alliance for Affordable Energy warns the gas plants could raise customer rates statewide, as utilities recoup costs over decades while Meta’s 15-year contract leaves stragglers holding the bag.
Meta hedges. That MOU with Entergy eyes nuclear exploration—uprates first, small modular reactors later. CEO Mark Zuckerberg boasted on Threads of scaling to five gigawatts, rivaling Manhattan’s footprint and New Orleans’ annual draw six times over. A joint venture with Blue Owl Capital funds the phased buildout. Still, gas dominates near-term. Why? It delivers gigawatt-scale reliability on tight timelines. Renewables lag; batteries bridge gaps but don’t baseload.
This isn’t isolated. Hyperscalers race nationwide. Microsoft partners with Chevron on West Texas gas; Google backs Crusoe’s North Texas plants; Oracle expands Bloom fuel cells to 2.8 gigawatts. Meta’s Ohio Prometheus campus bundles 1-gigawatt servers with on-site gas, off-grid. X posts amplify the irony: viral clips decry Meta’s emissions—equivalent to five million cars yearly—while the firm preaches climate restraint. Shreveport Times tracks Entergy’s regulatory push.
Louisiana wins big economically. Governor Jeff Landry hailed the initial $10 billion announcement as “a new chapter.” Meta’s logged $875 million in local contracts by December 2025, 84% Northeast Louisiana firms for paving, utilities, meals. But trade-offs sting. The grid gains 30% capacity, yet rural lines strain under construction loads. Experts like Logan Burke of Alliance for Affordable Energy flag threats to affordability. And nationally? AI’s thirst accelerates fossil reliance, challenging decarbonization pledges.
Meta’s capex hits $115 billion in 2026, Hyperion the crown jewel. Partners like DPR Construction call it the firm’s most advanced site yet. Compute wars demand it. Llama models need clusters this vast. But funding gas at scale exposes tensions: tech’s green image versus AI’s voracious appetite. Rural Louisiana bears witness first. Boom today. Bills tomorrow. Power secured—for now.
WebProNews is an iEntry Publication