Super Bowl LIX signage goes up on high-rise buildings around the Caesar’s Superdome in downtown New Orleans on Wednesday, January 8, 2025. (Photo by Chris Granger, The Times-Picayune)
Super Bowl LIX signage goes up on high-rise buildings around the Caesar’s Superdome in downtown New Orleans on Wednesday, January 8, 2025. (Photo by Chris Granger, The Times-Picayune)
Entergy New Orleans set out last year to make a bold proclamation for Super Bowl LIX in the Caesar’s Superdome next month: It will power the entire city with “clean power” for the three days surrounding the event.
The problem: the company doesn’t actually have enough carbon emissions-free power to supply the city for that duration.
Instead, Entergy New Orleans is now embarking on an unusual energy swap with its affiliate, Entergy Louisiana. The New Orleans company will get more than 3,300 megawatt hours of power from an old nuclear plant 100 miles away, in the rolling hills of St. Francisville, for three days, according to documents filed with regulators.
That’s not to say the event will result in fewer emissions. In return, Entergy New Orleans will send the equivalent amount of power from a natural gas-fired plant in Westwego to Entergy Louisiana, documents show.
The energy swap highlights enduring gaps in Entergy’s ability to deliver large amounts of clean power, despite years of prodding from local officials and advocates to clean up the grid and bring New Orleans in line with carbon-free goals. Entergy New Orleans gets only 6% of its power from solar. Nuclear provides a little less than a third of Entergy’s power.
Documents filed with regulators show Entergy is seeking to bring positive attention from the deal, which comes a year after Super Bowl LVIII in Las Vegas generated glowing press for being powered by a solar farm in the desert. Entergy’s director of resource planning and market operations Keith Wood wrote in regulatory filings that it represented the company’s “aspirational sustainability goals.”
“The agreement also will allow the NFL to promote that the Super Bowl is being serviced entirely through ‘clean power,’” Wood wrote. “This not only will bring favorable attention to the City of New Orleans and the State of Louisiana during a time when economic growth in the State is inextricably linked to utilities’ ability to provide ‘clean power’ to prospective customers, it also will help to maintain the City’s position as a desired host for the Super Bowl.”
Next month will be the 11th time New Orleans has hosted a Super Bowl, tying Miami for most all time. Local and state leaders have rushed to fix crumbling infrastructure and clear homeless encampments to please Super Bowl organizers and attendees. They’ve also sought to assure visitors that New Orleans is safe after the city made international headlines on New Year’s over a terrorist attack on Bourbon Street that killed 14 and injured dozens.
Jesse George, New Orleans policy director for the Alliance for Affordable Energy, a consumer advocacy group, called the Entergy power swap a “shell game” at a council meeting last month where the committee that regulates Entergy quietly approved the deal.
“The reason Entergy is not able to provide clean energy is because of its lack of investment in renewables and transmission which would allow cheaper and cleaner renewables to be brought in from outside the region,” George said.
Entergy New Orleans spokesperson Beau Tidwell said in a statement that the move was not a Super Bowl requirement, but a proactive move by Entergy. He noted that Entergy customers will not see any additional costs associated with the deal, which calls for shareholders to cover any overcharges.
He added that nuclear power, which does not emit carbon dioxide, represents about 30% of its resources.
Entergy and its affiliates have not adopted renewables like solar and wind as a significant part of its portfolio to date, instead relying on relatively cheap and abundant natural gas to power big power plants that deliver a solid return to the publicly-traded company.
Entergy Louisiana is proposing even more investment in natural gas plants in north Louisiana to power a massive data center from Meta, which is racing with other tech giants to build out artificial intelligence infrastructure cheaply and quickly. The state Legislature also passed a tax credit that will deliver Meta millions in savings.
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