Meta bankrolls seven gas plants to feed its ai beast, ditching green pledges

Meta just slammed the climate brakes. The company will finance seven new natural-gas plants in Louisiana to guarantee 5.2 GW of electricity for Hyperion, the largest data-center complex it has ever attempted.

The price of intelligence is fossil fuel

Hyperion’s projected draw tops the output of three nuclear reactors. Entergy Corp., the regional utility, confirmed that Meta—not ratepayers—will bankroll the turbines, 240 miles of transmission lines, battery arrays and even upgrades to existing nukes. The tab is undisclosed, but grid filings hint at a multi-billion capex sprint.

Consumer groups have spent months warning that ai clusters are jacking up retail power prices. Entergy now claims the deal will save customers $2 billion over 20 years, a figure critics call accounting pixie dust since the plants are on Meta’s dime and the grid still inherits the carbon load.

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink has already flagged ai as an inequality accelerant; rural Louisiana just became the laboratory. The state’s industrial corridor, still rebuilding from repeated climate disasters, will inhale an extra 12 million tons of CO₂ a year once the turbines spin—equivalent to putting 2.6 million cars back on the road.

Meta declined to say whether the move torpedoes its 2020 pledge to reach net-zero value-chain emissions by 2030. The Science Based Targets initiative, which blessed that vow, told TechBloom it is “seeking clarification” and has the option to delist the company.

Trump’s White House, meanwhile, cheers the arrangement. A senior DOE official called it “the template” for keeping ai wattage off household bills—socialize the profit, privatize the smokestack.

Construction starts this fall. When Hyperion’s first server halls boot up in 2027, the hum you hear will be the sound of a trillion-parameter model—and a climate promise—both running on methane.