WASHINGTON – Entergy was among more than 220 utilities, tech companies and state political officials that signed onto a pledge not to pass along to regular customers the increased costs for producing more electricity to fuel artificial-intelligence data centers, President Donald Trump announced Thursday.
Gov. Jeff Landry, Entergy CEO Drew Marsh and Richland Parish School Board Superintendent Sheldon Jones all attended the ceremony in Washington, D.C. where Trump made the announcement.
“These companies are spending tremendous amounts of money in these communities,” Trump said at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency event.
The new commitments mean that signatories to account for about 80% of all power delivered to U.S. homes and businesses, he added.
Landry and the other signatories didn’t participate in the public portion of the event — though Trump did name-check the governor, saying he was “smart” and “popular.”
Landry was overheard afterwards asking if Trump would attend a football game with him. Trump responded he will as the president left the event.
A rush of jobs, but concerns about power
Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, is building a massive data center in Richland Parish.
Landry and other Louisiana officials have heralded the plant as a transformative economic development win. But they have also faced concerns that the power-hungry centers will jack up utility bills: A consultant for the Public Service Commission, which regulates utilities in Louisiana, recently said the data center was driving the need for Entergy to purchase a new power plant for $1.8 billion, costing ratepayers an average of $8 a month.
Entergy and Meta have said the consultant is incorrect and that the tech company is paying for all its own power needs.
Landry last month signed an executive order saying that must have their benefits to citizens “evaluated and balanced” against their use of electric generation, water and land.
After the event, Landry said on social media: “Who wins the AI race will absolutely control the levers of global power. But winning, as President Trump said, cannot come at the cost of American families, and his Ratepayer Protection Pledge demands that tech companies cover cost of power generation and infrastructure, rather than shifting them onto citizens.”
Trump said “smart” people support building data centers in their communities as AI is an emerging industry and the facilities being constructed will create a lot of jobs.
The data center boom is to service the expanding use of remote servers and the internet cloud to help increase visuals, develop applications, and other internet functions.
President Donald Trump greets Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Thursday, July 23, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Alex Brandon
Trump came up with the pledge earlier this year as businesses and homeowners around the country saw their utility bills escalate, and the burgeoning AI industry sought to more open database centers that require lots more power than is usually available.
Monthly residential , on average nationwide since 2025, according to Electric Choice, a Tyler, Texas service that compares federal data to calculate electricity rates.
“They’re just very large. They go on for miles. They also throw off a lot money,” Trump said of the data centers.
Opposition was pushing some of the companies to start looking overseas for locations, with China being a main beneficiary, Trump said.
The costs of expanding electricity generation and transmission in most jurisdictions, including Louisiana, are paid for by a utility company’s customers.
Entergy Corp., whose subsidiaries sell power to most of Louisiana, was one of the utility companies signing the pledge. The utility agreed to protect its current customers from cost-shifting in Meta’s Richland Parish project. Customers can expect to save $2.65 billion over 20 years, the company says.