Little ado about data centers

Data centers this election cycle seem to be a hot-topic controversy everywhere but here in Louisiana.

What’s the deal?

Why it matters: The fall election season is in the home stretch, and no candidate with a legitimate chance of winning is saying much of anything about it. This is despite Louisiana being a Public Service Commission vote away from approving billions of dollars in new power plants for data centers—not to mention existing tax breaks with similar billion-dollar projections.

National talking point: From Texas to Virginia, candidates in both parties are running away from data centers, not toward them.

• Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican and one-time ardent supporter, now wants AI data centers kept out of rural neighborhoods and their tax breaks ended.
• Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat, rolled out a data center accountability framework in September.
• More than 50 projects have been canceled this year amid community opposition, and the backlash crosses party lines.
• About three in five Americans oppose a data center in their community, a survey found, including majorities of Democrats, Republicans and independents.

Mum’s the word here: Louisiana candidates are saying data centers should pay their own way on energy costs, but that’s pretty much where the conversation ends.

• Families and small businesses “should not be left footing the bill,” Republican Senate nominee Julia Letlow said in a written statement.
• Public Service Commission candidates Stephanie Hilferty, John Atkins, James Green and Chris Justin are singing from the same hymn sheet.
• The lone candidate who ran on tougher regulation, Austin Lawson, lost his primary in May.

Why so quiet? Three things are muting the debate.

• Nothing is open yet. Four campuses are under construction, and none is expected to start operating before 2027. That leaves Louisiana debating theory while other states are dealing with real-world results.
• There are few competitive races. There’s no governor’s race; the Senate seat is solidly Republican, House candidates are fighting about everything but data centers, and the PSC races, rarely of high interest, sit near the bottom of the ballot.
• Washington leans one way. President Donald Trump is pro-data center, and Gov. Jeff Landry and the state’s Republican congressional delegation—including Speaker Mike Johnson and Majority Leader Steve Scalise—largely march in lockstep with him. Letlow, the Senate nominee, had his backing before she even announced.

The big picture: Data centers are open elsewhere, and the number crunching isn’t matching the hype.

• Virginia’s auditors found the state gets back 48 cents for every sales tax dollar it forgoes on data centers—better than its other sales tax exemptions, but still short of a dollar.
• A Georgia study put the state’s cost at $1 million to $2 million per job, though the industry calls it an outlier.
• Louisiana has no such number. The Department of Revenue says it has no history to estimate the rebate's cost, though developers have already claimed $39 million and the total is expected to climb into the billions.
• Landry’s June order tightens the rules for future projects, but LED says the four big campuses already have the exemption.
• Entergy’s settlement with commission staff also allows the utility to skip the usual bidding process for the plants.

The bottom line: It’s unlikely that any tough questions about data centers in Louisiana will be asked until a few are up and running.