HOLLY RIDGE, La. — In a rural corner of Louisiana, Meta is building one of the world’s largest data centers — a $10 billion behemoth as big as 70 football fields that will consume more power in a day than the entire city of New Orleans at the peak of summer.

While the colossal project is impossible to miss in Richland Parish, a farming community of 20,000 residents, not everything is visible. For instance, it’s unclear exactly how much the social media giant will pay toward the cost — more than $3 billion — for new electrical infrastructure needed to power the facility.

Watchdogs have warned that in the rush to capitalize on the AI-driven data center boom, some states are allowing massive tech companies to direct expensive infrastructure projects with limited oversight.

Mississippi lawmakers allowed Amazon to bypass regulatory approval for energy infrastructure to serve two data centers it is spending $10 billion to build. In Indiana, a utility is proposing to create a data center-focused subsidiary that operates outside normal state regulations. And while Louisiana says it has added consumer safeguards, it lags other states in efforts to insulate regular power consumers from costs tied to data centers.

There is less transparency due to confidentiality agreements and rushed approvals, said Mandy DeRoche, an attorney for environmental advocacy group Earthjustice.

“You can’t follow the facts; you can’t follow the benefits or the negative impacts that could come to the service area or to the community,” she said.

Under contract with Meta, power company Entergy agreed to build three gas-powered plants that would produce 2,262 megawatts — equivalent to a fifth of Entergy’s current power supply in Louisiana. The Public Service Commission approved Meta’s infrastructure plan in August after Entergy agreed to bolster protections to prevent a spike in residential rates.

Nonetheless, nondisclosure agreements conceal how much Meta will pay.

Consumer advocates tried but failed to compel Meta to provide sworn testimony, submit to discovery and face cross-examination during a regulatory review. Regulators reviewed Meta’s contract with Entergy but were barred from revealing details.

Meta did not address AP’s questions about transparency, while Louisiana’s economic development agency and Entergy say nondisclosure agreements are standard to protect sensitive commercial data.

Davante Lewis — the only one of five public service commissioners to vote against the plan — said he’s still unclear how much electricity the center will use, if gas-powered plants are the most economical option and if the project will create the promised 500 jobs.

“There’s certain information we should know and need to know but don’t have,” Lewis said.

Additionally, Meta is exempt from paying sales tax under a 2024 Louisiana law that the state acknowledges could lead to lost revenue totaling “tens of millions of dollars or more each year.”

Meta has agreed to pay for about half the cost of building the power plants over 15 years, including cost overruns, but not maintenance and operation, said Logan Burke, executive director of the Alliance for Affordable Energy, a consumer advocacy group.

Public Service Commissioner Jean-Paul Coussan insists there will be “very little” impact on ratepayers.

But watchdogs warn Meta could pull out of its contract or not renew it, leaving the public to pay for the power plants over the rest of their 30-year life span, and all grid users are expected to help pay for the $550 million transmission line serving Meta’s facility.

Ari Peskoe, director of Harvard University’s Electricity Law Initiative, said tech companies should be required to pay “every penny so the public is not left holding the bag.”

Elsewhere, tech companies are not being given such leeway. More than a dozen states have taken steps to protect households and business ratepayers from paying for rising electricity costs tied to energy-hungry data centers.

Pennsylvania’s utilities commission is drafting a model rate structure to insulate customers from rising costs related to data centers. New Jersey’s utilities regulators are studying whether data centers cause “unreasonable” cost increases for other users. Oregon passed legislation this year ordering utilities regulators to develop new, and likely higher, power rates for data centers.

And in June, Texas implemented what it calls a ‘kill switch’ law empowering grid operators to order data centers to reduce their electrical load during emergencies.

Some Richland Parish residents fear a boom-and-bust cycle once construction ends. Others expect a boost in school and health care funding. Meta said it plans to invest in 1,500 megawatts of renewable energy in Louisiana and $200 million in water and road infrastructure in Richland Parish.

“We don’t come from a wealthy parish, and the money is much needed,” said Trae Banks, who runs a drywall business that has tripled in size since Meta arrived.

In the nearby town of Delhi, Mayor Jesse Washington believes the data center will eventually have a positive impact on his community of 2,600.

But for now, the construction traffic is frustrating residents and property prices are skyrocketing as developers try to house thousands of construction workers. More than a dozen low-income families were evicted from a trailer park whose owners are building housing for incoming Meta workers, Washington said.

“We have a lot of concerned people — they’ve put hardship on a lot of people in certain areas here,” the mayor said. “I just want to see people from Delhi benefit from this.”

Editor’s note: Brook reported from New Orleans.

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HARRISBURG, Pa. — The explosive growth of the data centers needed to meet Americans’ fast-rising demand for artificial intelligence and cloud computing platforms has spurred states to dangle incentives in hopes of landing an economic bonanza, but it’s also eliciting pushback from lawmakers and communities.

Activity in state legislatures — and competition for data centers — has been brisk in recent months, amid an intensifying build-out of energy-hungry data centers and a search for new sites that was ignited by the late 2022 debut of OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

Many states are offering financial incentives worth tens of millions of dollars. In some cases, those incentives are winning approval, but only after fights or efforts to require data center operators to pay for their own electricity or meet energy efficiency standards.

Some state lawmakers have contested the incentives in places where a heavy influx of massive data centers has caused friction with neighboring communities. In large part, the fights revolve around the things that tech companies and data center developers seem to most want: large tracts of land, tax breaks and huge volumes of electricity and water.

And their needs are exploding in size: from dozens of megawatts to hundreds of megawatts and from dozens of acres up to hundreds of acres for large-scale data centers sometimes called hyperscalers.

While critics say data centers employ relatively few people and contribute to little long-term job creation, their advocates say they require a huge number of construction workers, spend enormous sums on goods and local vendors, and generate strong tax revenues for local governments.

In Pennsylvania, lawmakers are writing legislation to fast-track permitting for data centers. The state is viewed as an up-and-coming data center destination, but there is also a sense that Pennsylvania is missing out on billions of dollars in investment that’s landing in other states.

“Pennsylvania has companies that are interested, we have a labor force that is capable, and we have a lot of water and natural gas,” state Rep. Eric Nelson said. “That’s the winning combination. We just have a bureaucratic process that won’t open its doors.”

Kansas approved a new sales tax exemption on goods to build and equip data centers, while Kentucky and Arkansas expanded pre-existing exemptions so that more projects will qualify.

Michigan approved one that carries some protections, including requirements to use municipal utility water and clean energy, meet energy-efficiency measures and ensure that it pays for its own electricity.

Such tax exemptions are now so widespread — about three dozen states have some version of it — that it is viewed as a must-have for a state to compete.

“It’s often a nonstarter if you don’t have them, for at least the hyperscalers,” said Andy Cvengros, who helps lead the data center practice at commercial real estate giant JLL. “It’s just such a massive impact on the overall spend of the data center.”

In West Virginia, lawmakers approved a bill to create “microgrid” districts free from local zoning and electric rate regulations where data centers can procure power from stand-alone power plants.

Gov. Patrick Morrisey, a Republican, called the bill his “landmark policy proposal” for 2025 to put West Virginia “in a class of its own to attract new data centers and information technology companies.”

Utah and Oklahoma passed laws to make it easier for data center developers to procure their own power supply without going through the grid while Mississippi rolled out tens of millions of dollars in incentives last year to land a pair of Amazon data centers.

In South Carolina, Gov. Henry McMaster signed legislation earlier this month that eased regulations to accelerate power plant construction to meet demand from data centers, including a massive Facebook facility.

The final bill drew a fight from some lawmakers who say they worry about data centers using disproportionate amounts of water, taking up large tracts of land and forcing regular ratepayers to finance the cost of new power plants.

“I do not like that we’re making customers pay for two power plants when they only need one,” Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey told colleagues during floor debate.

Still, state Sen. Russell Ott suggested that a data center operator should be viewed like any other electricity customer because it reflects a society that is “addicted” to electricity and is “filling that need and that desire of what we all want. And we’re all guilty of it. We’re all responsible for it.”

In data center hotspots, some lawmakers are pushing back.

Lawmakers in Oregon are advancing legislation to order utility regulators to ensure data centers pay the cost of power plants and power lines necessary to serve them.

Georgia lawmakers are debating a similar bill.

In Virginia, the most heavily developed data center zone in the U.S., Gov. Glenn Youngkin vetoed a bill that would have forced more disclosures from data center developers about their site’s noise pollution and water use.

In Texas, which endured a deadly winter blackout in 2021, lawmakers are wrestling with how to protect the state’s electric grid from fast-growing data center demand.

Lawmakers still want to attract data centers, but a bill that would speed up direct hookups between data centers and power plants has provisions that are drawing protests from business groups.

Those provisions would give utility regulators new authority to approve those agreements and order big electric users such as data centers to switch to backup generators in a power emergency.

Walt Baum, the CEO of Powering Texans, which represents competitive power plant owners, warned lawmakers that those provisions might be making data center developers hesitant to do business in Texas.

“You’ve seen a lot of new announcements in other states and over the last several months and not as much here in Texas,” Baum told House members during a May 7 committee hearing. “I think everybody right now is in a waiting pattern and I worry that we could be losing to other states while that waiting pattern is happening.”

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