# John P. Bethel John P. Bethel is Director of Public Affairs at [[Entergy Arkansas]]. He is the sponsor of the [[Bethel Direct on JPS Industrial Load Growth|public-affairs and economic-development testimony]] in the [[Jefferson Power Station]] CECPN docket (25-047-U) — **the corpus's most explicit public-record discussion of data-center / industrial load growth as the justification for a new natural-gas plant**. ## Role and affiliations Director, Public Affairs at Entergy Arkansas. Bethel's role is the public-facing and economic-development liaison between EAL and prospective large-load customers, the [[Arkansas Economic Development Commission]], the Arkansas State Chamber of Commerce, and the public. ## Appearances in the corpus - [[Bethel Direct on JPS Industrial Load Growth]] — Doc. 10 in [[psc/docket-25-047-u-jefferson-2026-05-22/_overview|Docket 25-047-U]], filed 2025-08-01. Testifies that EAL has an "economic development team" working with prospective new industrial customers; that the "Year-Over-Year Industrial Load Growth" Table 1 (2026–2030) is filed under HSPI seal; and that EAL had **executed new electric service agreements totaling 161 MW of incremental load as of 2025-07-01** — the closest public reference to the data-center contract load. - Subsequent rebuttal (Doc. 86, HSPI-sealed) and sur-surrebuttal (Doc. 103) testimony in 25-047-U — not retrieved. ## Notes Bethel's testimony layers two arguments structurally: JPS is needed regardless of data-center growth; AND data-center growth makes JPS more critical. The structure ensures Commission approval of JPS does not require the Commission to find that data-center load alone justifies the plant.