The Hook
Meta is building a data-center campus in Richland Parish, Louisiana — the same campus that is the subject of the multi-billion-dollar financing structure described in the Bad Trade. To power it, Louisiana is building gas. A lot of gas.
The Question
When a state utility commission approves multi-billion-dollar generation for a single private customer, and that customer has no long-term obligation to stay, who is the guarantor?
The Paper Trail
August 2025: the Louisiana Public Service Commission voted to approve three new combined-cycle gas plants totaling 2,262 megawatts, plus a new 500-kilovolt transmission line. That vote happened before the commission's own administrative law judge had issued a recommendation — the arguments from ratepayer advocates were still being heard when commissioners voted yes.
April 2026: LPSC fast-tracked a plan to add seven more gas plants to serve the expected data-center load. The fast-track process compresses the review timeline that normally allows for thorough ratepayer-impact analysis.
The contracts approved did not include binding provisions requiring Meta, rather than Louisiana ratepayers, to bear the stranded-asset cost if the data center closes early or reduces its load significantly before the gas plants are paid off. The standard regulatory mechanism for protecting ratepayers from single-customer infrastructure risk — a take-or-pay clause, a minimum-load guarantee, or an exit penalty tied to undepreciated asset value — was not secured in the approved terms.
The Synthesis
Louisiana's regulators had a choice: approve the infrastructure with ratepayer protections attached, or approve it on the timeline Meta needed without them. They chose the latter, twice, with the second decision made faster than the first. The data center may run for 30 years and the gas plants may be fully justified. But if it doesn't, the people who pay Louisiana utility bills are the ones holding the depreciating infrastructure.