ntergy Corp. is considering expanding its use of nuclear energy in Arkansas, Chairman and CEO Drew Marsh said Monday (May 4), while Entergy Arkansas President and CEO Laura Landreaux pledged that new data centers will pay for their fair share of the costs.
Entergy Corp. is the parent company of Entergy Arkansas and serves more than 3 million customers in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. They spoke at the Arkansas Economic Development Foundation 2026 Luncheon in Little Rock.
Marsh said a 2020 company study of regional electricity use found that the amount of electricity sold will triple or quadruple by 2050. That amount cannot be served by natural gas and solar.
“You’re going to need nuclear, and so we believe that new nuclear is going to be part of the future here in Arkansas,” he said. “And we’re very engaged with all the different vendors on how that might work, whether they’re small modular reactors — SMRs — or the larger reactors like they built over in Georgia.”
The costs for such a plant would be daunting. The final costs for the Plant Vogtle nuclear facilities built in Georgia rose significantly above projections. The overruns alone are bigger than Entergy Arkansas, he said.
He said construction would require help from either the federal government or big data center customers with their trillion-dollar balance sheets. The latter would need to see lower costs.
“And we are working on some ideas to do that, but I think those are the prerequisites to get to new nuclear,” he said. “But I do believe it will happen.”
Marsh chairs the Nuclear Energy Institute, which advocates for the nuclear industry, and said he is “very pro-nuclear.”
In the meantime, Landreaux said the company is seeking a license extension for the two Arkansas Nuclear One plants in Russellville — what she called “the heartbeat of our base load supply plan for decades now.” The licenses would extend 20 years beyond when their licenses expire in 2034 and 2038, when they will have reached their 60-year lives.
The two responded to questions posed by Randy Zook, president and CEOof the Arkansas State Chamber of Commerce.
They spoke during a time of expanding growth in electricity thanks to demand placed by data centers and other users. Across the four-state system, Entergy Corporation has orders in place for 26 gas projects, 23 of which are 750-megawatt plants with one gas and one steam turbine. Marsh said the company is using standardization to manage costs and schedules more effectively.
Marsh said that when he started with the company in 1998, the company’s customers were divided evenly in thirds among commercial, residential and industrial customers. Now it’s roughly 50% industrial customers.
He said that six weeks ago, the company unveiled its Fair Share Plus pledge stating that data centers must pay for all the incremental costs created by them for joining the system as well as their share of the existing costs. Across the system, data centers are picking up $7 billion that the customers were already covering, he said. Entergy Arkansas has announced that the new Google data center in West Memphis and the Avaiao data center in Little Rock will save Entergy Arkansas customers $1.7 billion.
Furthermore, he said customers benefit because the increased production needed by Google creates resiliency and fuel diversity on the grid. Entergy is also investing in energy efficiency.
Landreaux said Arkansas can increase generation to serve the large users responsibly.
“I pledge to you today that we are taking on these types of loads responsibly, ensuring that they are paying their fair share plus, and that our grid can handle these large loads,” she said. “And more importantly, that everybody is benefiting from it.”
Landreaux said Entergy Arkansas, which hasn’t built in 50 years, is constructing three power plants capable of a total of 3 gigawatts of production. Those are the Ironwood Power Station natural gas plant in Hot Spring County, the Jefferson Power Station natural gas plant in Jefferson County, and Arkansas Cypress Solar and Battery, also in Jefferson County. It is looking at its current assets to see which coal plants it could covert from coal to natural gas. It’s looking to see how it could upgrade its current plants to make them more efficient. It’s also investing in managing vegetation, the top cause of outages.
Marsh said the fact that Entergy is a rate-regulated utility makes it easier to increase power generation. Entergy operates the generation, transmission and distribution in the state. If a large customer needs power, Entergy can provide a complete technical solution and interface with the governor and Public Service Commission. In Pennsylvania, in contrast, the generators, transmission providers, retail and system operators are different entities, and responding to needs is more difficult.
The Arkansas Economic Development Foundation raises money to support the Arkansas Economic Development Commission’s employer recruitment efforts.
Earlier, Clint O’Neal, executive director of the Arkansas Economic Development Commission, said Arkansas is competing for 92 active projects that could create more than 22,000 new jobs and more than $22 billion in capital investment.
Referring to an Arkansas map featuring logos of companies that have made investments in Arkansas during Gov. Sarah Sanders’ time in office, he said, “We won’t win them all, but I’m confident that in the coming months there will be many more logos on this map.”
Source: TB&P