This piece is being co-published with ExxonKnews, a reporting project of the Center for Climate Integrity (CCI), an advocacy group that provides research and tools to help communities hold oil and gas corporations accountable.

In a move that complicates Louisiana’s transition toward renewable energy, a bill passed by the Louisiana Legislature last week redefines natural gas, a fossil fuel, as “green energy” and instructs state utilities to use energy generated by hydrocarbons. 

The bill is headed to Gov. Jeff Landry, who is expected to sign it into law later this month.

Some critics found the very idea ludicrous. “There’s nothing clean or green about continued extraction of carbon from underground, whatever the flavor is,” said James Hiatt, a former oil and gas worker from Calcasieu Parish and founder of For a Better Bayou. “For them to categorize [hydrocarbons] as green is just a blatant lie by lobbyists for the oil and gas industry.”

HB692, sponsored by Rep. Jacob Landry (R-Erath), comes as state regulators at the Louisiana Public Service Commission kick off a public planning process addressing how Louisiana utilities will source energy and meet electricity needs of customers and increasing industrial demands. 

Consumer and environmental advocates fear that the new bill might encourage utilities to choose gas over renewable developments—and, in New Orleans, weaken adherence to the city’s clean energy requirements. 

Though Louisiana has relied heavily on its petrochemical industry for decades, the industry’s contributions to the state’s economy are now in decline. The oil and gas industry, which once accounted for 60% of the state’s revenues, now provides only 4.5% of the total, according to a report from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. 

Meanwhile, Louisiana is experiencing extreme effects from climate change, as its coastal lands sink and erode while sea levels rise and heat reaches record highs. Gas is a significant driver of climate change—methane, the primary component in natural gas, is an extremely potent greenhouse gas. As its emissions continue to rise, so has the price of climate disasters in Louisiana. Those disasters, in turn, continue to affect the state’s power grid.

But HB692 was not created to fit Louisiana’s specific needs. It appears to have grown out of a national campaign to redefine gas as “clean,” “green” or “renewable” energy, which has been backed by dark money groups with ties to the gas industry. Since 2023, other states have passed laws similar to Louisiana’s bill, in an apparent backlash against state and local governments’ renewable energy initiatives.

Though Louisiana’s residential customers, reliant on air conditioning, consume the most energy per capita in the nation, its grid is one of the least reliable. Louisiana does not generate enough electricity to meet in-state demand and receives about one-seventh of its power from the regional grid. 

It also lags far behind other regions in renewables. Less than 5% of Louisiana’s electricity came from renewables like solar or wind, as of February 2025, while most–74%–came from gas. About 14% came from nuclear energy, which will now be codified as “green” or “clean” under the new bill. 

Still, reliance on fossil fuels is a tradition in Louisiana, supported by tax breaks. Rep. Landry, who authored the bill, comes from Erath, Louisiana, where key national gas pipelines intersect. He and his supporters say gas is an affordable, reliable source of energy that should continue to be the backbone of the state’s power grid. 

Opponents argue that the state’s overreliance on gas and reticence to adopt solar and wind energy has led to high costs, an unreliable grid, and toxic air pollution that threatens the climate and public health. They worry that Louisiana’s new bill will further entrench that reliance.

Hydrocarbons: Louisiana’s new “green energy”

“Natural” gas is a specific blend of hydrocarbons, which are defined in Louisiana statute as being “oil and gas occurring naturally in the earth and any other valuable liquid or gaseous substance found and produced in association with them.” 

Now, “green energy” will include hydrocarbons, as long as they meet the National Ambient Air Quality Standards under the Clean Air Act when combusted for electricity. These public health requirements, however, are also shifting, as the Environmental Protection Agency moved last week to roll back greenhouse gas emissions standards for power plants.

The bill allows gas entities to become eligible for “all state programs that fund ‘green energy’ or ‘clean energy’ energy initiatives.” Summarized within the legislative index for its focus on energy security, affordability, and a reliable grid, the bill emphasizes domestically produced energy sources and mandates that utilities within Louisiana “shall… use energy generated by hydrocarbons.” It also instructs the Department of Energy and Natural Resources to work with state regulators to determine how energy is sourced in the state.

One new definition is inexact. “Affordable” is defined as “the lowest reasonable cost method of providing electricity is used, factoring in the true and total cost of each generation source.” But the bill doesn’t elaborate on how that cost would be calculated. 

Other precepts and definitions were “based on misconceptions and mistaken assumptions” about energy sources, said Jackson Voss, climate policy coordinator for the consumer advocacy group Alliance for Affordable Energy. 

During a hearing on the legislation in the Senate Natural Resources Committee, Rep. Landry framed the issue using mistaken assumptions about renewable energy, which are often paired with batteries to store energy that can be used in any weather condition. “Sometimes the sun don’t always shine and sometimes the wind don’t always blow,” Landry said, suggesting the state was better off relying heavily on gas. “We need a source that’s constant, consistent and reliable on a cost-effective basis.”

Evidence suggests that Louisiana residents bear the burden for the state’s refusal to diversify its power sources. Residents here shoulder far higher energy bills while experiencing some of the most frequent and longest power outages in the country, according to a report published by the Louisiana Legislative Auditor’s Office earlier this year. 

High energy use, the increasing price of gas, and more frequent extreme weather events—which can lead to large-scale failures in gas plants—contribute significantly to the outages and high costs, the report found.

Before the new bill passed, the Advanced Power Alliance attested to this in written testimony.  “Codifying [fossil fuels] as the only acceptable path forward,” the testimony reads, “dismisses a growing body of evidence that grid reliability depends on resource diversity, transmission flexibility, and smart integration of all available technologies, including renewable energy resources.”

Davante Lewis, one of five regulators serving on the Louisiana Public Service Commission, agrees that investments are focused too heavily in one area.

“We have invested in one sole-generation source, which is dispatchable generation natural gas,” he told the Senate Natural Resource Committee before its members passed Rep. Landry’s bill. “The point that I’m making is not that it’s to be replaced, but it also has some complications,” Lewis said, noting that he has been working along with others at the commission to look “at multiple options that allow the grid to stay reliable but also affordable.”

In 2018, the New Orleans City Council approved a controversial new gas plant after Entergy used paid actors at meetings to fake community support for the project. Yet that gas plant ultimately failed during a storm, prompting questions about whether gas should be considered a reliable energy source after all. 

Gas plants also release carbon dioxide and a slew of toxic pollutants during combustion—raising concerns about their contributions to the state’s increasing summer heat, coastal issues and frequent disasters, along with public health issues related to local air quality. “Louisiana is at the front line of the climate crisis,” said Voss, of the Affordable Energy Alliance, who questioned the idea of building more local gas power plants—which will now be able to emit even more pollution in Louisiana’s air, because of federal government deregulation.

Renewables could take a hit

Outside of the Capitol, there’s widespread support for new technologies. The majority of Louisiana residents support the expansion of renewables like wind and solar alongside fossil fuels, according to a survey published this year by the Reilly Center for Media & Public Affairs at the LSU Manship School of Mass Communication.

New Orleans’ renewable portfolio standard requires that Entergy, the state’s largest utility, stop supplying carbon-emitting energy sources to the city by 2040 (with some offsets allowed) and entirely move away from fossil fuels by 2050. 

Rep. Landry’s new legislation is directed at state regulators and doesn’t explicitly preempt the city’s requirements, as managed by the New Orleans City Council through its unique regulatory power over Entergy New Orleans. But renewable energy proponents worry that his bill could influence whether Entergy New Orleans and state utilities take on new renewable projects—or whether they use this change in law as a pretext for not fulfilling the requirements of the city’s renewable portfolio standards.

Entergy New Orleans declined to comment on these concerns.

In some states, like Tennessee, similar state legislation does override municipal renewable standards—specifically, requirements that renewable energy sources, like wind and solar, supply a certain amount of the state’s electricity demand. Like Louisiana, a new law in Tennessee considers gas a renewable energy source but Tennessee went a step further, requiring municipalities to do the same—which could prevent Nashville from attaining its goal of 100% renewable energy by 2041.

Because of a post-committee amendment to the bill, Department of Natural Resources staff and regulators must “ensur[e] [that] Louisiana has a sufficient supply of renewable energy production sources.” But the rest of the bill skews toward fossil fuels, implying, Voss said, that utilities “should have a strong preference for things that use hydrocarbons, at the very least.” 

That is part of the bill’s design, some of Rep. Landry’s allies say. “In effect, the bill establishes an ‘anti-RPS’ (Renewable Portfolio Standard) framework of sorts,” wrote Jeff Sadow, an associate professor at Louisiana State University Shreveport, in a recent op-ed. “It not only blocks the imposition of an RPS in Louisiana but also elevates natural gas and nuclear to equal standing with renewable sources.”

Electricity production is being engineered to support further industrialization

“Big things are coming to Louisiana to grow our economy,” said Rep. Landry before his bill’s final vote, in a reference to some of Louisiana’s big upcoming projects, including Meta’s $10 billion investment in Richland Parish. “We just want to make sure that we don’t affect our grid due to lack thereof ability to send power places,” Landry said.

If strictly enforced, the new bill could directly impact how Entergy Louisiana plans and constructs the next generation of power plants, especially as it ramps up to supply power to Meta’s planned Louisiana data center, which will be the company’s largest in the nation, at more than four million square feet. 

Last year, Entergy announced that it would build “modern, efficient” electricity generators for Louisiana’s data center.

But Entergy lacks the capacity to meet the energy demands of such a mammoth facility. So the utility is attempting to fast-track the buildout of three new gas power plants—two in Richland Parish and one in St. Charles Parish.

Entergy customers will be on the hook for $470 million to finance the project, according to filings with the Louisiana Public Service Commission and the Midcontinent Independent Service Operator, as reported by New Orleans City Business.

More industrial expansion will place further demand on Louisiana’s grid. In May, the Louisiana Public Service Commission approved a proposal from Entergy to invest $498 million in infrastructure upgrades for new facilities planned for the RiverPlex MegaPark in Ascension Parish. 

CF Industries, which already operates the world’s largest ammonia plant in Ascension Parish, plans to produce fertilizer with a $4 billion “blue” ammonia plant with high energy demands. Hyundai Motor Group also plans to build a $5.8 billion steel manufacturing plant at the site.

The “blue” ammonia plant relies on unproven carbon capture technology, developed in partnership with ExxonMobil, to store the plant’s greenhouse gas emissions. Pelican Hub, a carbon-sequestration hub that’s under development on more than 30,000 acres across Livingston and St. Helena Parishes, will also require a yet-to-be-determined amount of electricity to compress, transport and inject carbon dioxide more than a mile underground.

Landry’s bill seems to impinge on the commission’s authority to decide how energy in the state is sourced, several House colleagues suggested. “We certainly don’t need a bill that encroaches upon the constitutional authority of the Public Service Commission,” said Rep. Edmond Jordan. “I think this would be challenged and deemed unconstitutional.”

The dark money campaign to rebrand gas as “green”

In 2024, Gov. Landry signed a pro-gas proclamation stating that “Louisiana recognizes natural gas as an affordable, reliable, and clean energy resource,” and that efforts to transition away from fossil fuels stand to “devastate” Louisiana consumers and economic growth.

The Louisiana proclamation was celebrated by a group called The Empowerment Alliance, a gas advocacy group. “That’s three down and 47 more states to go,” wrote the group, which is now pushing similar bills across the country.

HB692 also received support from the Heartland Institute, a fossil-fuel funded climate denialist group with a history of obstructing solar energy development in Louisiana and other states. The legislative committee heard testimony from Heartland Impact, its advocacy arm. 

While Entergy’s direct involvement in the bill is unclear, the corporation was identified as part of The Empowerment Alliance, as documented in notes from an executive committee meeting of the American Gas Association. Meeting participants laid out industry plans to block state and local transitions away from gas and other fossil fuels, the notes show.

Bills similar to Louisiana’s have passed in Ohio, Tennessee and Indiana. Many of them echo a model bill finalized in September by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)—a Koch-funded lobbying network known for drafting legislation to stall climate action. 

The Empowerment Alliance, helmed by a former gas-industry executive couple, has led the push for ALEC’s model bill—floating the idea directly with legislators, calling it a “roadmap to victory” on its website, and encouraging all 50 states to pass the legislation. 

Any move away from the gas industry undermines the nation’s strong economy and is an affront to American freedoms, lobbyists say.

In its initial version,  the Louisiana bill introduced by Rep. Landry in April included nearly identical language to ALEC’s model legislation, stating that “green energy shall mean any energy generated by utilizing an energy resource in which the emissions are equivalent to the standard set by pipeline-quality natural gas.”