Entergy CEO Drew Marsh wants you to know that AI data centers won't drive up your electricity bills. They'll just consume massive amounts of electricity in your region while you continue paying for electricity. Completely different things.
Marsh says data centers can be "a win for local communities." He's using the corporate definition of win, which means the company wins and you get to live near a windowless warehouse that pulls enough power to run a small nation. Your kids can put that on a postcard.
The pitch works like this: data centers pay Entergy for electricity, Entergy uses that money to build more infrastructure, and somehow your bill stays flat because of scale and Jesus and market dynamics. It's the same math that says adding more cars to a highway reduces traffic. You just have to believe hard enough.
Marsh is technically correct that data centers create jobs. Someone has to watch the servers. Someone has to watch the person watching the servers. Maybe your neighbor Gary can retrain as a Cooling System Optimization Specialist Level 2 after his accounting firm automates his job using the AI trained in the data center he now monitors. Circle of life.
The fear isn't that data centers will drive up bills. The fear is that they'll drive up bills and Entergy will say they didn't while pointing to a PowerPoint slide with three arrows that all point up but one is labeled "savings" in a different color.
Retail traders are already pricing in a future where they pay thirty percent more for electricity but feel good about it because Drew said it helps the community. They're buying Entergy at the top and setting stop losses at yesterday's low like that's how risk management works.
The real win for local communities is watching their CEO explain that massive industrial electricity consumption has no effect on electricity prices. That's not economics. That's faith healing with a rate schedule.
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