While Jackson residents are showing stiff opposition to a proposed data center, a new report has come out indicating Entergy residential rates have gone up $10.60 a month.
Dozens of protestors crowded a Jackson Planning Board meeting on a future data center development on roughly 190 acres near Forest Avenue and Interstate 220 in Northwest Jackson.
A Musk data center in Memphis has created a lot of opposition. Residents complain of the noise and pollution from the gas-fired generators used to power the data center.
Meanwhile, Synapse Energy Economics is distributing a report that claims the Mississippi data centers are already causing residential rates to climb, despite promised by Entergy officials that the data centers would reduce residential rates.
The Synapse report was prepared for Earthjustice and Environmental Advocates of Mississippi.
Google AI describes the group: “Earthjustice is the nation's premier nonprofit environmental law organization. Operating on behalf of frontline communities and conservation groups, they provide free legal representation to fight polluters and enforce environmental laws. Environmental Advocates Mississippi is a regional advocacy group that frequently partners with legal and research teams to analyze how massive corporate energy demands—like the tech and data center buildout—impact local utility bills.” Earthjustice has been leading the charge to oppose the Southaven Musk data center.
The 27-page report seems to be quite detailed an technical.
The report’s executive summary states:
“In 2024, the Mississippi Legislature passed Senate Bill 2001 (SB2001). This unprecedented legislative action curtailed the standard oversight role of the Public Service Commission (PSC) over energy infrastructure, making it easier and faster to expand the electrical grid for data centers. The investments needed to accommodate these new loads will be measured in the billions of dollars. By limiting the role of the PSC, Mississippi legislators transferred significant risk to residential consumers, who as a class of ratepayers, have now lost a key transparency and fairness check on Entergy Mississippi (Entergy or company), the largest electricity provider in the state. This report addresses major concerns with this loss of transparency namely, that the costs associated with data center growth and the grid improvements that these new customers have sought may be borne by residential consumers and other ratepayers.
“Using publicly filed information, we estimate that Entergy’s residential ratepayers in Mississippi have already paid approximately $38 million as of March 2026 for investments related to serving these data centers, and that they will contribute $74 million by the end of 2026. As a result, the average residential customer’s bill is now about $10.60 per month higher. We stress that these are estimates and that there is considerable uncertainty about impacts given that much of the key information is not publicly available.”
This report confirms that basic points that Kelley Williams and I have been making for a couple years about the data centers.
First, we have argued the secrecy and lack of transparency is inappropriate given that the Mississippi legislature has granted Entergy an exclusive monopoly to provide electricity in its service area.
The Synapse reports confirms this: “Entergy argues that the addition of data centers within its corporate footprint, including in Mississippi, will help to reduce residential customer bills. However, since the Amazon. passage of SB2001, Commission review is conducted confidentially, leaving customers to take Entergy at its word about purported rate savings.”
Second, we have argued the rate Amazon is paying is secret and probably far lower than the typical residential rate. This means residential customers will carry far more of the cost burden of these data centers than Amazon.
The Synapse report confirms that too: “If the rates that data centers pay are below the costs of serving them, then other customers will effectively be subsidizing these data centers, as the other customers pay rates that are higher than their respective costs of service.”
The report points out that many states have established special rates for large load carriers precisely to prevent such cost shifting to residents. For instance, a new law in Michigan requires data centers to demonstrate that cost shifting is not occurring.
Even worse than cost shifting is the prospect of stranded assets. That means Entergy builds billions in transmission infrastructure and then the data centers back out, leaving the residential customers holding the bag.
Unfortunately, Mississippi has a long history of applauded economic development deals that never realized their promised potential. And, not surprisingly, the “claw back provisions” are rarely enforced. Once again Mississippians are left paying the cost.
The Synapse report states: “Serving large-load customers can require investments in new or upgraded substations, high-voltage lines, and distribution feeders, reinforcements to the local transmission network, and additional generation or capacity procurement. These investments are often customer specific, but data center load can be volatile: projects can be canceled before construction, expansions can be scaled back, and technology or market shifts (e.g., moving to another jurisdiction, changing computational workloads) can cause abrupt changes in load. If the data center load ultimately does not materialize, under-builds relative to its original commitment, or exits early, the utility and its remaining customers may be left paying for stranded or under-utilized assets for decades.”
Poor Mississippi. We are so desperate for Texas-like economic development that we’ll sign any deal, no matter how bad. That creates some short-term gains, but over the long haul, it hurts economic growth. Low utility prices have historically been a great economic asset to Mississippi. As the data centers cause our energy prices to go up, we will lose this advantage, offsetting whatever benefit the data centers may confer.
P.S. The Sun lost power on its deadline day last week, undermining our proofing. My column last week had two errors: First, Natchez had the most millionaires in 1860, not 1960. And opthalmologist Terrell Williams is not retired.
