Gas and nuclear energy developer ONE Nuclear Energy has executed a binding letter of intent (LOI) to develop a 2.88GW natural gas plant and 700MW/2.88GWh energy storage system, co-located with a high-capacity data centre campus.
Announced 31 August, the LOI for the Project Cayman natural gas plant and battery energy storage system (BESS) was executed with an unnamed “prominent Louisiana landowner group.”
ONE Nuclear said the project complements utility Entergy’s substantial expansion of regional transmission infrastructure, reinforcing ONE Nuclear’s dedication to supporting Louisiana’s growing industrial and technology industries.
Project Cayman is positioned strategically adjacent to Louisiana’s RiverPlex MegaPark, northeast of SpaceX’s recently announced infrastructure development. The facility will support these regional economic growth initiatives by introducing dispatchable generation capacity, energy storage and technology infrastructure in proximity to new industrial demand and transmission investment, with the goal of enhancing regional grid stability.
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It is unclear who the data centre campus is for. Local reporting from August stated that there are not currently any data centres planned for Ascension Parish, where RiverPlex MegaPark is located, but that the Parish has been working to introduce zoning standards for potential data centre projects.
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has recently put forward a new regulation that would remove federal mandates requiring states to publicly disclose and seek community feedback on air pollution permit applications for various industrial facilities, including new data centres and the power generation plants required to operate them.
This move comes as data centre approvals face increasing scrutiny, with multiple US states, including Georgia, New York, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Vermont, and others having either introduced or passed moratoriums or other pauses on data centre development.
This summer, Amazon, Google and Microsoft disclosed double-digit emissions growth in their 2025 environmental sustainability reports, primarily attributed to electricity consumption. According to sustainability media platform Trellis Group, reported emissions from power usage surged by over one-third at Amazon and Google, whilst Microsoft recorded an increase exceeding 20%.
Technology publication WIRED recently reported that gas-fired power plants serving data centres are engineered with significantly lower efficiency than grid-connected gas power plants—potentially increasing their CO2 emissions.
The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) also recently issued its most urgent grid reliability warning in response to AI data centres causing massive power fluctuations.
NERC’s alert outlined seven mandatory actions for registered entities to implement immediately, citing “customer-initiated large load reductions and significant oscillations that occur in seconds, leaving little or no room for real-time responses, threatening bulk power system (BPS) reliability.”
Energy-Storage.news Premium spoke to three experts on the topic, including Thomas Sisto, co-founder and CEO of flow battery company XL Batteries, who stated, “We’re not talking about small fluctuations anymore—we’ve seen events where 1,000MW or more dropped off the grid in a matter of seconds. Now think about where this is headed: individual AI campuses drawing several gigawatts, which is the power demand of a small city. When a load that size ramps up or down within milliseconds, the grid simply wasn’t built to absorb that.”
ONE Nuclear stated that community outreach has already begun for Project Cayman and is expected to include public information meetings with local parishes, governmental agencies and other project stakeholders from September through December.
Battery Asset Management Summit USA 2026 will be held 15-16 September in Garden Grove, California, hosted by Energy-Storage.news publisher Solar Media (part of the Informa Group). The agenda emphasises addressing the roles of AI, cybersecurity, and second-life applications, broken down into two tracks: Technical Asset Management and Commercial Asset Management. This year, the conference is also co-located with Solar & Storage Finance Summit USA. Visit the official site for more details.
