Consumer Groups Alarmed as Louisiana PSC Declines to Take Up Probe Into Meta Risky Financing Deal

Baton Rouge, LA —

Today, the Louisiana Public Service Commission (PSC) refused to investigate a risky financial arrangement Meta made with Blue Owl Capital to finance its massive $27 billion data center in Richland Parish, LA. Under the new arrangement, Meta sold off 80% of the data center to a venture debt company– a new tactic by Big Tech to avoid bearing these projects’ financial risks. This setup could leave everyday Louisianans paying for three huge new methane gas plants if Meta exits its new, 4-year lease agreement with Blue Owl.

The Commission’s decision comes after Earthjustice, on behalf of the Alliance for Affordable Energy and the Union of Concerned Scientists, filed a motion on January 14 requesting the PSC conduct an investigation into the effect of Meta’s new financial arrangement with Blue Owl Capital — which the Wall Street Journal dubbed “Frankenstein financing” — and its impact on ratepayer protections.

In August, the PSC approved Entergy Louisiana’s application to build three new billion-dollar gas plants and related transmission assets to power Meta’s enormous data center — despite opposition from Earthjustice and the community. The PSC’s approval of the project was based on an existing financial arrangement between Meta and the data center developer — a parental guarantee that ratepayers would be shielded from paying for the new project.

But on the same day the PSC approved Entergy’s application, Meta fundamentally changed the financial terms of the project. In a joint venture with Blue Owl Capital, the tech giant established an additional parent company for its data center developer called Beignet that left Meta with only a 20% stake in that holding company. Beignet then borrowed $27 billion to fund the Richland Parish data center, creating a risky and complex financial scheme that now allows Meta to walk away from the data center after just four years.

The three new gas plants for the Meta data center have a 30-year lifespan. If the data center closes before the gas plants’ lifespan ends, which this new financing structure enables, the cost of those gas plants will appear on household utility bills. Already, the more than half a billion dollars in transmission costs solely for the data center will be paid by all of Entergy’s customers as soon as construction is completed.

With today’s decision, the PSC is denying Louisianans an opportunity to fully examine and weigh in on the impact of Meta’s financial arrangement on their wallets. The PSC is also failing to conduct a prudence review to determine whether Entergy knew about the new financial arrangement and failed to inform the Commission before its vote on August 20, 2025. Even if Entergy did not know about the financial arrangement, the motion calls into question whether construction of the projects continues to be in the public interest.

“When trillion-dollar tech companies like Meta make novel financing moves that allow them to walk away from a data center project earlier than reported — shifting even more of the long-term cost of fossil-fuel infrastructure onto ratepayers — regulators have a responsibility to take a hard look. By dismissing this motion, the PSC is giving the green light to more tech companies to use this kind of financial maneuvering to maximize profits while evading public accountability,” said Susan Stevens Miller, senior attorney at Earthjustice.

“This financing deal is not in the public interest and we want to be clear that the only ones benefiting from this risky financing scheme, and the corresponding massive investment in fossil-fuel infrastructure the Commission approved to power the data center, are Meta and Entergy Louisiana,” said Alaina DiLaura, PSC Policy Coordinator at the Alliance for Affordable Energy.

“From day one Meta has operated from the shadows, refusing to come to the table as a formal participant at the PSC and instead having Entergy do its bidding. The fact that Meta moved to shield itself from even more of its data center’s financial risks right after the PSC approved this costly fossil fuel project should be raising huge red flags. Commissioners are elected with the mandate to protect ratepayers, but today they chose to prioritize a trillion dollar company over Louisianans already struggling with expensive, unreliable energy,” said Paul Arbaje, energy analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists.