Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry has issued an executive order directing the development of criteria for the Louisiana Ratepayer and Community Protection Initiative. This new framework aims to ensure that companies receiving state incentives do not shift the cost of new power plants, transmission lines, water infrastructure, or other upgrades onto existing residential and commercial customers.

Existing Projects May Be Exempt

The order may arrive too late for some of Louisiana’s biggest data center projects, which were already certified for the state’s data center tax break before the framework was created. These projects include Meta’s massive Richland Parish campus, Amazon’s Caddo-Bossier project, Applied Digital’s facility in Rapides Parish, and Hut 8’s project in West Feliciana.

A Louisiana Economic Development spokeswoman stated that the new framework was modeled on agreements those companies reached with the state and their host parishes. The rules are intended to balance the opportunities brought by data centers with the need to protect the state’s natural resources.

Original reporting: KTBS 3 (Shreveport) — read the source article.