Meta’s New Data Center Financial Arrangement Puts Louisianans at Higher Risk of Shouldering Costs of Stranded Assets

NEW ORLEANS, La. (Jan 14, 2026)-Earthjustice filed a motion today on behalf of the Alliance for Affordable Energy (AAE) and the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) recommending the Louisiana Public Service Commission (LPSC) conduct an investigation into the effect of Meta's new financial arrangement with Blue Owl Capital and its impact on ratepayer protections related to the Richland Parish data center project.

On the same day of the Commission's approval of Entergy's application to build 3 new billion-dollar gas plants and related transmission assets, Meta fundamentally changed the financial terms of the project by shifting 80% ownership of the data center complex to a new joint venture with Blue Owl Capital, Beignet, for roughly $3 billion. Beignet then borrowed $27 billion to fund the Richland Parish data center, creating a risky and complex financial scheme that allows Meta to walk away from the data center after just 4 years. The consequence for Louisianans is an increased risk of shouldering the costs of billions of dollars in stranded assets.

The motion seeks an investigation into whether the Commission was misled regarding the financial arrangements of the data center project and recommends the Commission 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 prudent.

In addition to the changes with the ownership structure, there have been significant changes to the proposed size of the data center. In July 2025, Mark Zuckerberg announced that the final size of the project will be 5 gigawatts, roughly double the size originally listed in planning documents.The LPSC has an obligation to know and understand the financial structure supporting the data center and its overall impact so it can protect existing customers and the assumptions the Commission made when it voted on this project have been significantly altered.

Below is a statement from Logan Burke, Executive Director of AAE.

"This project has always represented unprecedented risk to Louisianans, and from the start Meta has done everything it can to shield themselves from that risk. The additional distance created by this financial deal is a tacit acknowledgement of that risk, and shows that this venture is really a gamble using other people's money."

Below is a statement from Paul Arbaje, energy analyst at UCS.

"Louisiana ratepayers may have even less protections from the costs of this massive data center than they had just several months ago, which were already severely lacking. The Commission must look further into Meta's new financing structure to make sure that the bag Entergy's customers are already holding hasn't ballooned out of control."

Read the full motion here.