Amazon Web Services a win for Mississippi, Entergy customers
Entergy Mississippi customers are very familiar with our company’s role: generating and transmitting power to their homes and businesses 24/7. What they may not know is that we bring more than just electricity to Mississippi. We bring jobs, too.
I am proud to say that Entergy Mississippi took a leading role in helping our state land tech giant Amazon Web Services — which was announced last month as one of the biggest economic development wins in Mississippi history, totaling 1,000 new jobs and $10 billion in new investment.
Entergy was one of the first to talk to AWS about locating one of their largest data center campuses in Mississippi. In what was a five-year process, we worked closely with AWS, the Mississippi Development Authority, Gov. Tate Reeves and the Mississippi Legislature, who passed and signed key legislation over the last several years that helped make Mississippi an attractive choice for the company.
Entergy Mississippi employs a team of economic development professionals who travel the Southeast, the U.S. and the world recruiting large industrial prospects to Mississippi along with the jobs and economic activity they generate.
Working together with state, local and federal officials, Entergy Mississippi’s economic development team has been a part of recruiting not only AWS, but some of the biggest job-creation projects in Mississippi history, including Nissan, Continental and Milwaukee Tool among others.
Entergy Mississippi is an important player in Mississippi’s economic development efforts and the reason is simple: the cost, reliability and source of electricity is one of the most important factors for companies when deciding where to locate a facility and create jobs.
Thankfully for our service area, Entergy Mississippi’s low rates, strong reliability rankings and diverse mixture of nuclear, natural gas and renewable power has given Mississippi a big advantage in industrial recruiting in recent years. In addition, our state has been fortunate to have the Mississippi Public Service Commission, which has valued the important role power plays in economic development in many of their regulatory decisions.
Bringing a large company like AWS to Mississippi not only creates new job opportunities for our customers and their families, but bill reduction opportunities as well. Most large industrial customers use a lot of power … sometimes the equivalent of what thousands of residential customers use.
When Entergy Mississippi recruits any large power user to our service area, existing customers benefit because those companies share in the cost of the power generation and infrastructure, which lowers the cost for everybody else. In other words, an Entergy Mississippi customer in the near future could get a new, higher-paying job at AWS and also see savings on their future power bills because of their new employer, too.
Entergy Mississippi linemen are recognizable and respected in our communities because of the great work they do for our customers after storms. But even though they may not be as visible or well-known, the men and women on Entergy Mississippi’s economic development team also deserve credit from our customers and communities for the great work they do every day to create new jobs and economic success for Mississippi.
Haley Fisackerly is president and CEO of Entergy Mississippi.