The decade of magical thinking

Entergy's CEO says they're not quite gonna make their 2030 climate goals after all. Dangit. I know they were always taking that really seriously, too. They must feel awful about it. Or maybe they don't?

In a speech Wednesday to more than 300 energy professionals, policymakers and students at Tulane University’s Future of Energy Forum, Marsh said the huge new power plants, expected to cost more than $3 billion, will improve grid reliability for customers statewide at a cost of pushing back some of its carbon goals.

“It makes it harder to reach our goals in the near term, but I think it has the potential to make it easier in the long term,” said Marsh, who heads the only Fortune 500 company headquartered in New Orleans. “2030 is going to be tough, but I think we still have a good shot at 2050, because Meta can bring its $2 trillion company to bear on this problem and help us clean up.”

How?  It doesn't matter. Magic, probably.  Check back in 2050 to see how it went.  

Boom times for Entergy

The greatest "economic pipeline."

More than 18 months after Louisiana officials began wooing executives from Meta to the state, eventually helping land the Facebook parent company’s massive artificial intelligence data center near Monroe, Entergy Louisiana CEO Phillip May said he sees more economic development potential in the state than at any time in his 40-year career.

“We have the greatest economic pipeline since the post-World War II years,” May said in an interview Tuesday. “We have growth from the traditional petrochemical sector and also a new set of opportunities.”

Sounds amazing. I can't wait to live in the future.  

Should probably remember that he said this, though. I have a feeling it might come up at some point. 

Environmental groups and advocates for renewable energy have criticized the plan and questioned whether consumers will get hit with higher utility bills if Meta bails on the plant after 15 years. May said he isn’t worried that will happen, and argued that Meta investments in transmission infrastructure, resilience upgrades and the plants themselves represent a benefit to customers.

“Louisiana customers will continue to get low-cost power from the plants,” even if Meta were to pull out after 15 years, May said, adding that by then, much of the grid’s infrastructure will need upgrades and that “customers will be paying for that as they would.”

In middle Atlantic and Northern states where large data centers have been operating for years, residential customers have seen monthly utility bills go up by 20% to 30% in some cases. May said he believes that is unlikely to happen in Louisiana, where utilities are regulated.

“Those states are deregulated,” he said. “If you’re in a competitive market like that and prices are at an all-time high, it gets passed along to everyone.”

We'll see! 

Is this good?

Is it good that the one area of your economy where investment isn't falling off is the highly speculative bullshit area? 

I think you can see the consequences of uncertainty come forward in the explosion in corporate stock buybacks; that’s a sign of retrenchment, where money that could be deployed or invested is instead pushed out to shareholders. No wonder markets are near all-time highs while ordinary workers feel miserable.

The only area where this investment retrenchment and uncertainty is not in evidence comes from the insane capital expenditures for AI computing power, which is propping up the economy almost by itself. That’s why municipal pushback to data centers will be one of the more fascinating developments of the next few years. And it’s why we should pay a lot of attention to whether AI is a viable business, whether its gains are accelerating or stagnating, and whether too much of this capacity deployment is on spec and fated to cause a crash. (AI is creating other economic problems, but we’ll touch on those later.)

Louisiana residents probably already know that their Public Service Commission is preparing to approve Entergy's plan to build three new gas fired power plants solely for the purpose of supplying Meta's massive new data center in Richland Parish.  The plants won't benefit Louisiana ratepayers at all. But it will inevitably result in their paying higher rates. 

Okay, well, maybe there are some benefits to developing cutting edge AI technology.  For example, today, Microsoft announced its AI program has created a spreadsheet that is actually bad at math. 

Microsoft notes that you can combine its new AI function with other Excel functions, including IF, SWITCH, LAMBDA, or WRAPROWS. The company adds that information sent through Excel’s COPILOT function is “never” used for AI training, as “the input remains confidential and is used solely to generate your requested output.” 

The COPILOT function comes with a couple of limitations, as it can’t access information outside your spreadsheet, and you can only use it to calculate 100 functions every 10 minutes. Microsoft also warns against using the AI function for numerical calculations or in “high-stakes scenarios” with legal, regulatory, and compliance implications, as COPILOT “can give incorrect responses.”

Nobody knows what the use for any of this is, but it sure is interesting. Anyway, it's where all the money in America is going now so hopefully there aren't any signs of that whole business spectacularly imploding anytime soon.  There aren't any signs of that, right?

On Tuesday, Meta announced internally that it is splitting its A.I. division — which is known as Meta Superintelligence Labs — into four groups, two people with knowledge of the situation said. One group will focus on A.I. research; one on a potentially powerful A.I. called “superintelligence”; another on products; and one on infrastructure such as data centers and other A.I. hardware, they said.

The reorganization is likely to be the final one for some time, the people said. The moves are aimed at better organizing Meta so it can get to its goal of superintelligence and develop A.I. products more quickly to compete with others, the people said.

Some A.I. executives are expected to leave, the people said. Meta is also looking at downsizing the A.I. division overall — which could include eliminating roles or moving employees to other parts of the company — because it has grown to thousands of people in recent years, the people said. Discussions remain fluid and no final decisions have been made on the downsizing, they said.

Best of luck with all that. 

Jeff Landry is an asshole

 Pass it on. 

The Public Service Commission on Wednesday removed commissioner Davante Lewis as its vice chairman after he called Gov. Jeff Landry an "a**hole" on social media. 

On a 3-2 vote, the commission chose to replace Lewis with Commissioner Eric Skrmetta in that role on the board. The vote followed public comment from a line of people arguing the move violated Lewis' right to free speech.

How thin is the Governor's skin? I mean asshole is not even that out of bounds.  The WBRZ version of the story doesn't even censor it. 

BATON ROUGE — The Public Service Commission voted to remove Davante Lewis as vice-chairman at a Wednesday morning meeting after Lewis called Gov. Jeff Landry an "asshole" on social media last week. 

The commission voted 3-2 to remove Lewis and named commission member Eric Skrmetta vice-chair.

Of course there is also the possibility that this is about a little bit more than just hurt feelings.  It might, for example, have more to do with protecting Entergy and Meta from public oversight than with people using rude words.  

Two environmental and consumer protection groups are challenging Entergy's plan to power a massive AI data center for Meta, Facebook's parent company, in northeast Louisiana. 

 The Alliance for Affordable Energy and the Union of Concerned Scientists have filed a motion asking the state's utility regulators to deny Entergy's request to build three gas power plants at a cost of over $3 billion until it follows standard procedure. If the regulators side with the advocacy groups, Entergy would have to scrap the proposal in its current form and resubmit it after proving the gas plants are the best option available.

The regulator being appealed to here, of course, is the Public Service Commission. And the ousted co-chair seems to have a different approach to the issue than the person who will replace him... on behalf of the Governor's hurt feelings, of course.  

PSC commissioner Davante Lewis said that it was too early to comment on the motion, but that the filing raises questions that the commission should look into.

"Having a review process is important to ensure we are building generation that is needed that is also the most cost-efficient," Lewis said.

Eric Skrmetta, another commissioner, similarly declined to comment on the motion specifically, but said that he believed the concerns over fast tracking the process or massive power needs to be unfounded.