Louisiana Clean Energy Guide

Louisiana is a natural gas state — gas supplied roughly 76% of its electricity in 2024, the fifth-highest share in the nation — that has quietly become one of the South's fastest-growing solar markets. Utility-scale solar generation quadrupled in 2024, Meta's $10 billion Hyperion data center is pulling gigawatts of new demand into the state's northeast corner, and a 2025 law put state government into the solar permitting business for the first time. The buildout here is being driven by load growth and corporate procurement, not climate policy — and the difference shows in every parish council meeting.

State Policy: No Mandate, and Gas Is Now Legally "Green"

Louisiana has never adopted a renewable portfolio standard or clean energy standard, and none is coming. In 2025 the legislature moved in the opposite direction: Act 462 (House Bill 692, sponsored by Rep. Jacob Landry and signed by Governor Jeff Landry in June 2025) legally defines natural gas and nuclear power as "green energy" and "clean energy," requiring that they be eligible for every state program that funds green or clean energy initiatives. The law is built on ALEC template language that has also passed in Ohio, Tennessee, and Indiana. Former Governor Edwards' climate plan, which targeted net-zero emissions by 2050, has never been formally revoked, but the Landry administration has disavowed its goals and does not use it to guide policy; the operative state posture is that gas is the clean energy strategy.

Act 279: Louisiana's First Statewide Solar Siting Law

The more consequential 2025 statute for developers is Act 279 (HB 459, Rep. Coates), effective August 1, 2025 — Louisiana's first comprehensive renewable siting law. It gives the Department of Energy and Natural Resources (DENR) permitting authority over solar facilities of 75 acres or more, plus battery storage installation and decommissioning and onshore wind. Facilities built after January 1, 2026 face statewide setbacks: 300 feet from adjacent residential property lines, 100 feet from natural and navigable waterways, and 50 feet from public road pavement, with vegetative buffers and a noise cap of 10 dBA above pre-construction ambient. Every permit requires a decommissioning plan backed by financial security. Crucially, parishes can opt out of the state standards by resolution and write their own rules, and residential landowners can waive setbacks by written agreement. DENR must adopt implementing regulations by August 31, 2026; its decommissioning rule was noticed August 20, 2025, and the siting-standards rulemaking was anticipated to begin in March 2026. A broader solar-regulation bill, HB 615 by Rep. Brett Geymann, failed on the House floor in the 2025 session.

Incentives & Net Metering

• Industrial Tax Exemption Program (ITEP): The state's flagship incentive for utility-scale projects — an 80% property tax abatement for up to 10 years (an initial 5-year contract renewable for five more) on new manufacturing investment, with parish bodies weighing in on approvals. Solar developers have pursued ITEP, and some parish bodies have rejected solar applications.
• Net Metering: Retail-rate net metering ended for new customers after 2019. Under LPSC Distributed Generation Rules finalized in September 2019, systems interconnected after December 31, 2019 buy at retail but are credited at the utility's avoided cost for exports — roughly 4 cents per kWh versus a retail rate near 10 cents at the time of the change. Eligible systems are capped at 25 kW residential and 300 kW commercial or agricultural.
• No procurement mandate: There is no state requirement for utilities to buy renewables; utility-scale growth runs through LPSC certification of Entergy and Cleco purchases and corporate PPAs.

The Buildout: Solar Quadrupled in a Single Year

Louisiana had 19 operating utility-scale solar farms totaling 1,401 MW as of July 2026, per the Cleanview project database — essentially all of the state's utility-scale clean power capacity, since Louisiana has no utility-scale wind. The inflection came in 2024, when five farms totaling 708 MW came online and quadrupled utility-scale solar generation year over year, with roughly 700 MW more across 11 farms scheduled by 2026. Counting all segments, SEIA puts Louisiana at 1,765 MW installed — 32nd nationally, supplying 2.55% of state electricity — and projects the total roughly doubling to about 3,161 MW within five years.

Notable Projects

• Oxbow Solar 1 (Pointe Coupee Parish): 300 MW, the largest solar farm in Louisiana per EIA. Developed by Lightsource bp, acquired by JERA Nex in 2024; corporate offtakers include eBay. Online 2024.
• Oak Ridge Solar (Richland Parish): 200 MW, online 2023.
• Hollis Creek Solar (Sabine Parish): 200 MW, Treaty Oak Clean Energy, under construction with a long-term Meta PPA signed in October 2025; commercial operations expected in the first half of 2027.
• Beekman Solar (Morehouse Parish): 185 MW, Treaty Oak Clean Energy, also under a Meta PPA and slated for first-half 2027 operations using First Solar panels. Together with Hollis Creek, the two projects are projected to generate over $100 million in state and local tax revenue and roughly 300 peak construction jobs.
• Elizabeth Solar Plant (Allen Parish): 143 MW, Opdenergy, online 2024.
• Prairie Ronde Solar Farm (St. Landry Parish): 135 MW, Lightsource bp, online 2024.

The rest of the fleet fills in behind them: Amite Solar (100 MW, NextEra, Tangipahoa Parish, 2025), Lafitte Solar (100 MW, Ouachita Parish, 2025), Bayou Galion (98 MW, Recurrent Energy, Morehouse Parish, 2024), Rocking R (73 MW, DE Shaw Renewable Investments, Caddo Parish, 2025), and Entergy's Sterlington Solar (49 MW, Ouachita Parish, 2026).

What About Wind?

There is none, and there is unlikely to be any soon. Louisiana's onshore wind resource is weak, per EIA, and the state has no utility-scale wind generating facilities. The Gulf holds real long-term potential — a federal offshore lease was awarded in the Lake Charles area in 2023 — but the January 2025 federal pause on offshore wind leasing and permitting halted that development. For planning purposes, Louisiana clean energy means solar, full stop.

Siting & Opposition: Statewide Rules, Parish Vetoes

Until August 2025, solar siting in Louisiana was entirely a parish affair — police juries and parish councils, no state siting board. Act 279 nominally changes that, but its parish opt-out means the patchwork survives: a parish that wants tougher rules, or no solar at all, can simply pass a resolution. Several already have, and the moratorium wave predates the statute. We track active fights on our Louisiana opposition tracker.

• Iberville Parish (White Castle): NextEra withdrew its 175 MW, $250 million Coastal Prairie Solar project on August 26, 2025, after strong resident and parish council opposition at a May 2025 community meeting over farmland and quality-of-life concerns. The project had a planned December 2027 commercial date and an envisioned 20-year Entergy PPA.
• Livingston Parish: Adopted a moratorium on commercial solar approvals on May 23, 2024 (ordinance 24-11) and voted unanimously in March 2025 to extend it 12 months through May 2026 while drafting solar development rules.
• Ouachita Parish: The Police Jury voted March 17, 2025 for a six-month moratorium on new solar farm site permits — explicitly to diversify development after Meta's data center landed in neighboring Richland Parish. The in-progress Sterlington solar facility was exempted.
• Iberia Parish: Imposed a solar farming moratorium around January 2024, during negotiations with First Solar, and voted unanimously in July 2024 to extend the ban at least another year, citing the absence of local regulations and quality-of-life impacts.
• Bossier Parish: Adopted a six-month moratorium on all solar farm approvals in unincorporated areas in September 2022 (Ordinance 4910) — part of the earlier wave of parish pauses.
• Iberville Parish (west of Plaquemine): Entergy's LPSC-approved Cypress Harvest Solar project — a roughly $300 million build on former sugarcane fields — was drawing resident opposition near the Forest Grove subdivision as of May 2026, per local coverage.

The pattern is worth reading closely: opposition here is not anti-data-center — Ouachita's moratorium was pitched as making room for Meta-adjacent development — it is specifically anti-solar-on-farmland. Act 279's setbacks and decommissioning security requirements give developers a statewide baseline to point to, but the projects that die in Louisiana die at the parish level, before state permitting ever matters.

Demand: Meta's Hyperion Rewrites the Load Forecast

The single biggest fact in Louisiana power right now is Meta's Hyperion AI data center in Richland Parish, announced December 6, 2024: a $10 billion investment, more than 4 million square feet on the 1,400-acre Franklin Farm mega site (the campus spans roughly 2,250 acres between Rayville and Delhi), Meta's largest data center anywhere, with phased construction through 2030, a planned capacity of about 2 GW, and reporting that it could eventually scale toward 5 GW.

The supply response tells you everything about how Louisiana does energy. On August 20, 2025, the LPSC approved (4-1) Entergy Louisiana's supporting package: three combined-cycle gas plants totaling 2,260 MW — two in Richland Parish online in 2028, one at Waterford in St. Charles Parish by the end of 2029 — plus up to 1,500 MW of new solar and storage through an expedited certification process, roughly 100 miles of new 500-kV transmission (about $1.2 billion, targeted for completion December 2026), and the Meta-funded Smalling substation. Meta pays the plants' revenue requirements for 15 years, with an estimated residential bill impact around $1 per month. Gas carries the load; solar rides along — up to 1,500 MW of it, which would more than double the state's utility-scale fleet.

And Hyperion is not the end of the queue. Entergy's fourth-quarter 2025 update reported a 10-17 GW pipeline of prospective large loads — 7-12 GW of data centers plus 3-5 GW of other large industrials, including Hyundai's $6 billion hydrogen-and-steel plant near Baton Rouge. The utility expects 2026 weather-adjusted retail sales up 5% with industrial sales up 10%, roughly 15% annualized industrial growth through 2029, and has laid out a $43 billion capital plan for 2026-2029. Residential rates are projected to rise about 4% per year through 2029, partially offset by an estimated $5 billion in data-center rate offsets. The structural backdrop: Louisiana's industrial sector already consumes about 44% of state electricity, the state has the highest per-capita residential electricity use in the nation, and it ranks third in total per-capita consumption. Load growth is not a forecast here; it is the operating condition.

Outlook: Growth Without a Mandate

Louisiana's clean energy trajectory is set by demand, not decree. The near-term growth channel is unambiguous: Entergy's LPSC-authorized 1,500 MW expedited solar procurement plus corporate PPAs like Meta's October 2025 deals with Treaty Oak's Beekman and Hollis Creek projects. Against a 2024 baseline of 99.6 million MWh of total net generation — 16th in the nation — solar's share is still small, and the state's carbon-free share sits around 19%, most of it from the River Bend and Waterford 3 nuclear plants. But the direction is clear: solar passed hydropower in 2024 for the first time, at 37% of the state's renewable generation.

The variables to watch through 2026: DENR's implementing regulations under Act 279, due by August 31, 2026, which will define how the 75-acre permitting threshold works in practice; how many parishes exercise the opt-out; and whether the moratorium wave in Livingston, Ouachita, and Iberia hardens into permanent restrictions or relaxes as data-center tax revenue changes the local math. In a state with no mandate, no RPS, and a legislature that just defined gas as green, every megawatt of solar has to justify itself to a police jury. So far, the Meta-sized checks are winning that argument — parish by parish.

Frequently Asked Questions