Gov. Reeves pushes to make Mississippi a national energy leader.
On May 1, 2025, Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves launched a bold initiative aimed at making Mississippi a national energy leader. Called Mississippi’s Power Play, the plan is designed to cut red tape, spur private investment and turn Mississippi into a model state for energy policy and investment.
Reeves said his goal is to allow for faster permitting, reduced financial risk and more strategic investment within the state.
At a special meeting in Jackson, the governor outlined a plan that includes:
- Strategies for the diversification and security of energy sources.
- Enhancing energy infrastructure and logistics.
- Fostering innovation and technology adoption by focusing on developing advanced energy technologies through the support of innovation.
- Addressing regulatory issues to create a more efficient and predictable environment for energy projects.
“The key to Mississippi’s Power Play is effective public-private partnerships,” said Reeves. “We’re launching this massive initiative shoulder to shoulder with the private sector and leveraging our shared expertise to innovate in our state.”
Summit participants included leaders from around the state and country, among them top executives from Chevron, Entergy Mississippi, Exxon, Mississippi Power, Tennessee Valley Authority, U.S. Department of Energy and many others.
“Mississippi’s Power Play will help our state provide businesses with the energy they need to succeed, and deliver affordable, abundant American energy to Mississippians,” the governor said. “This initiative is critical to continuing our state’s economic momentum. That’s because many of the major economic development projects you’ve heard about in the news were large energy-intensive projects. If we want to win more projects like this, we need to produce more energy in our state. Mississippi’s Power Play will help us attract more private sector investment and create more high-paying jobs for Mississippians.”
Reeves made it clear that he backs an “all of the above” approach to energy development, meaning he embraces natural gas, nuclear power, renewable energy and other forms of power generation in Mississippi.
Gov. Tate Reeves laid out the core tenets of his Mississippi Power Play initiative at a special gathering of state and national energy industry leaders last May.
Photo courtesy of Mississippi Development Authority
Lithium Could Power the Future
One of those sources could be lithium. Mississippi rests on the Smackover Formation, which contains one of the highest-grade lithium brines in America. Experts say that access to this rare earth mineral is vital to ensuring long-term national energy independence and security.
Lithium brine is used to produce lithium-ion batteries, which are used to power electric vehicles, renewable energy storage systems and energy-intensive industries like data centers. As Mississippi grows its array of AI hyperscale data centers from Amazon Web Services, Meta, xAI, Compass Datacenters and others, access to a large supply of lithium would come in handy.
The governor’s Power Play includes a call to access this lithium deposit, extract it and refine it, said David Dockery, the state’s chief geologist. Doing this could turn Mississippi into an energy-generating giant, he noted.
Energy was also a main theme of this year’s legislative session in Jackson, where lawmakers passed bills designed to shore up power-ready sites and make them more affordable. HB 1393 created the Mississippi Energy Infrastructure Fund, while HB 1633 updated the Site Development Grant Program to include funding for electric and utility upgrades.
The Power Play initiative seeks to position the Magnolia State as a preferred destination for energy-intensive operations, and it is already paying dividends in the form of new steel and aluminum plants, hyperscale data center campuses and advanced manufacturing. On April 9, AWS announced new investments that will take the company’s total capital spending in Mississippi to $25 billion.
A Superpower in Hiding No More
The Power Play supports large-scale energy users like AWS by ensuring that they will have ample access to large supplies of power for many years to come. Last September, Entergy Mississippi announced “Superpower Mississippi,” the largest grid investment in the company’s history. The five year, $1 billion initiative aims to add more and better power to the grid, at a lower cost to customers, by 2030. The initiative includes three advanced natural gas power plants in Greenville, Vicksburg and Ridgeland. It also includes work to make the electrical grid more reliable and resilient, “including a $300 million additional investment to cut outages in half at no new cost to customers,” per the company.
“That work will increase tree trimming and upgrade poles to withstand more extreme weather,” the company stated. “It will also expand the use of smart devices and real-time monitoring systems that automatically identify faults, re-route power and restore service faster. These improvements are made possible by investments from Amazon Web Services and other large utility customers in Mississippi.”
The Entergy Mississippi statement added that “economic growth in Mississippi is expected to keep residential customer bills 16% lower than they would have been otherwise,” saving customers an estimated $2 billion on their power bills.
When Gov. Reeves talks about coordination between state government and utilities, this is what he is talking about — meeting long-term challenges by working together today to get out ahead of them. This is how Mississippi paves the way for growth and prepares for energy-intensive economic development projects going forward, the governor says.
That’s the real Power Play.
