Meta doubles down on Louisiana as Hyperion scales to 5 GW
Meta confirmed this week that Hyperion, its Richland Parish supercluster, will be built to 5 GW at a cost of more than $50 billion, well above the $27 billion attached to the project last October. Entergy Louisiana is expanding generation to serve the load, and state incentives have been central to the economics. The project is now the clearest example in North America of a single campus being planned at utility scale, and of a hyperscaler underwriting the power plants that feed it.
Source: CNBC, July 13, 2026.
Microsoft reports a 25 percent rise in CO2 emissions as data center growth compounds
Microsoft disclosed a 25 percent increase in carbon emissions, attributing much of the jump to data center expansion and to its decision to stop counting unbundled renewable energy credits toward its footprint. The disclosure matters beyond ESG reporting. It signals that hyperscalers are being pushed toward firmer, physically delivered power rather than certificate-based accounting, which changes what they will ask of generation partners and on-site power suppliers.
Source: Data Center Dynamics, July 10, 2026.
Texas leads the country in proposed gas plants tied to new data centers
Texas now accounts for 32 of the 74 natural gas fired power plants proposed nationwide to serve AI data center load, about 43 percent of the total, according to an Environmental Integrity Project report released July 1 and covered this week. One of those plants, the 600 MW Verdant facility, is tied to the proposed data center on the former Southland paper mill site outside Lufkin. The trend reflects developers routing around interconnection queues by pairing generation directly with compute, and it puts turbines, balance-of-plant, and emissions permitting squarely on the critical path of Texas projects. Expect the permitting fight to shape schedules as much as the equipment does.
Source: Red River Radio, July 6, 2026.
