Legislation to speed up utility expansion in Arkansas stalls on Senate floor

By Wesley Brown – March 6, 2025 – As Arkansas builds up its manufacturing capacity, several new capital projects scheduled for 2025 and beyond, corporate giants such as Walmart, Meta, Microsoft, and J.B. Hunt are investing in solar and renewable energy sources to power their future growth plans.

At the same time, Arkansas lawmakers have introduced legislation to speed up the process for Entergy Arkansas and other utilities and electric cooperatives to invest in large projects to increase electric generation capacity in the Natural State.

In the backdrop of Sen. Jonathan Disman, R-Searcy’s push to approve Senate Bill 307, more than a half dozen new projects, with capital investments exceeding $1 billion, were announced in early 2025 to diversify Arkansas’s energy mix.

In late January, Lowell-based J.B. Hunt Transport Services Inc. opened a new solar facility in Gentry that will generate enough electricity to offset up to 80% of the power used by its three main corporate campus buildings in northwest Arkansas. Construction of the facility began in 2024. NextEra Energy managed the project that Verogy Solar completed.

The 40-acre solar facility includes nearly 18,000 solar panels and 10,000-plus bi-facial solar modules to capture sunlight. This is then converted to electricity and transmitted to a nearby electric grid for Carroll County Electric. The facility will produce approximately 9.3M kWh annually and utilize net metering, which helps transfer surplus power onto the power grid.

“By commissioning this solar facility, J.B. Hunt is demonstrating our commitment to enhancing the communities we serve and to investing in economically viable practices aimed at creating a more sustainable supply chain,” said Greer Woodruff, executive vice president of safety, sustainability and maintenance at J.B. Hunt, noting that the facility will generate enough solar power equivalent to that used by nearly 1,200 homes.

Down the road in Bentonville, Walmart Inc. also unveiled its new northwest Arkansas retailer’s new 350-acre corporate campus that opened in January. In addition to working spaces and the company’s new executive suites, the 12-office corporate village includes a 73,000-square-foot campus childcare facility, a state-of-the-art health and fitness center, a 12-restaurant food court, and a 200,000-square-foot great hall named after the company’s iconic founder, Sam Walton.

Although Walmart has kept the costs of its new corporate headquarters close to the vest, its new home office features 100% sustainable mass timber construction, smart building technology, and offices powered by renewable energy.

The new facility has 5,000 planted trees, has 300 electric vehicle (EV) charging stations, and is expected to receive LEED Platinum certification this year, the highest rating for sustainable design and advanced green-building construction. Rating. Eventually, over 15,000 employees will work at the campus as offices open in phases through 2025.

Silicon Valley ripple effect

In February, Nashville, Tenn.-based Silicon Ranch announced a new multi-year agreement with Microsoft to deploy up to 100 megawatts (MW) of renewable energy projects over the next three years in historically underinvested communities in the Arkansas, Mississippi and Louisiana Delta region.

The first four solar projects in the multi-year pact with the Silicon Valley technology giant are set to break ground over the next few months and will be operational by the end of the year in communities across Arkansas and Louisiana. These will be among the first large-scale solar projects interconnecting and serving the local distribution grids in Poinsett, Cross, and Desha counties in Arkansas and Bienville Parish in Louisiana.

Based on the proposed projects’ locations, Clearloop expects the new solar portfolio to prevent more than 5 million metric tons of carbon from entering the atmosphere over the next four decades. These projects will help diversify the energy mix in Arkansas and Louisiana.

In 2023, Silicon Ranch’s Clearloop subsidiary and Microsoft collaborated on their first solar project, a 6.6-megawatt facility in the Mississippi Delta. That project became operational last summer. “Clearloop helps Microsoft achieve its carbon negative goals by supporting renewable energy projects in communities across the country that might otherwise miss out on the economic and environmental benefits of the energy transition,” said Danielle Decatur, Microsoft Director of Environmental Justice.

Silicon Ranch’s first renewable venture in Arkansas occurred nearly a decade ago when Aerojet Rocketdyne, the Arkansas Electric Cooperative Corporation (AECC) and Ouachita Electric Cooperative Corporation (OECC) flipped the switch on a 12-megawatt solar field at the Highland Industrial Park in East Camden. That 100-acre facility included 151,200 solar panels at Aerojet Rocketdyne’s rocket motor manufacturing site in south Arkansas.

Last month, Aerojet Rocketdyne parent L3 Harris Technology Corp., and the U.S. Department of Defense announced plans for a new $215 million rocket motor production complex in Camden that will increase the speed of production and delivery for the nation’s mission stockpile, including those headed to Ukraine.

Delta solar dawn

But Microsoft, L3 Harris, Walmart, and J.B. Hunt are not the only Fortune 500 companies to strike deals to produce utility-scale renewable energy in Arkansas. On March 4, Silicon Valley-based Adapture Renewables Inc. announced that it has secured $321 million in financing from Mistubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG) to support the construction of a 441 MW solar project spanning three sites across Arkansas and Illinois.

Earlier in 2023,  Adapture and Meta, the parent of Facebook and Instagram, first announced the pact to finance three Arkansas and Illinois projects with an estimated net economic impact surpassing $400 million. These projects are set to create approximately 500 temporary jobs during the construction phase and maintain around 25 full-time equivalent positions during operations, providing ongoing economic benefit to residents of the host communities.

Although Meta and Adapture have not announced the location of the solar projects in Arkansas, Meta announced in December that it is building a monumental $10 billion AI data center project in Richland Parish, La., calling it “a transformational investment that cements the state’s status as a major innovation hub and leader in the global digital revolution.”

The 4 million square foot data center will be located about an hour’s drive from Junction City, Ark., in Union County, and will be Meta’s largest AI center worldwide. Meta projects the data center will support at least 500 direct new jobs in Richland Parish. LED estimates the project will create more than 1,000 indirect jobs, for more than 1,500 potential new jobs in the region.

Meta, one of the largest corporate buyers of renewable energy, has pledged to match its electricity use with 100% clean and renewable energy. This means that for every unit of electricity the data center consumes, an equivalent amount of clean energy is added to the grid. Meta said it will work with Entergy Louisiana, part of utility giant Entergy Corp. and sister utility to Entergy Arkansas, to invest in modern, efficient generation facilities and robust transmission infrastructure to support the region and Meta’s data center.

Meta said it will bring at least 1,500 MW of new renewable energy to the grid to achieve its renewable energy goal in the Arkansas and Mississippi Delta, significantly contributing to the region’s clean energy goals.

Lastly, Treaty Oak Clean Energy, LLC of Austin, Texas, alongside local officials, economic development leaders, and community leaders in Arkansas, celebrated the groundbreaking of the $123 million, 100-megawatt Redfield Solar Project in Grant County on Wednesday (March 5).

Spanning 1,033 acres in southeastern Grant County, the solar facility will create approximately 200 construction jobs and generate more than $10 million in property tax revenue over its lifespan. The project’s total energy output—enough to power about 18,000 homes—will be purchased by a single offtaker through a long-term power purchase agreement. Commercial operations are slated to begin in the first half of 2026.

“This project is much more than a solar facility,” said Treaty Oak’s co-founder and CEO, Chris Elrod. “It’s a significant investment in the people, businesses, and future of Grant County. From the beginning, our goal has been to be a good neighbor—working closely with county leaders, local businesses, and residents to ensure this project benefits the entire community.”

The Redfield Solar Project will incorporate Arkansas-manufactured materials, strengthening local supply chains and maximizing economic benefits across the state, officials said. The steel for the advanced Nextracker NX Horizon-XTR terrain-following solar tracker systems will be sourced from U.S. Steel’s Big River Steel Mill in Osceola. At the same time, Crossett-based Premier PV will supply key components such as connectors and harnesses.

Senate Bill 307 Stalls

Meanwhile, as these large renewable energy projects in Arkansas come online, SB307 failed Wednesday during a vote of 17-11 on the Senate floor. Following the vote, a motion was carried to expunge the vote, allowing the bill to come back up again during the legislative session.

During the debate in the Senate chamber, Dismang called his bill a “job creator” for the state of Arkansas. “I believe SB307 … is the next step that we have to take to acquire and do what we need to do to be ultimately successful as a job creator.”

Specifically, the Grant County senator noted that Entergy Arkansas will shutter its aging White Bluff and Independence coal-fired plants by the end of 2030 under a federally-approved settlement agreement.  

“The reality is that we not only need to create more potential jobs coming in to the state, but for our people currently calling Arkansas home,” Dismang argued. “We have 3.2 gigawatts of power that is set to come offline in the future, which means we need to do what we can to put that power back in the play.”