Developers are planning to build an enormous amount of natural gas-fired power plants in the U.S., fueled in large part by the AI boom. The expansion is a serious threat to the nation’s decarbonization efforts — but because so much gas development remains speculative, it’s tough to discern the exact magnitude.
Nearly 380 gigawatts of gas power plants have been announced or are under development in the U.S., per a new report from Global Energy Monitor. Gas is already the nation’s biggest source of electricity and a major source of greenhouse gas emissions. Roughly 500 GW of capacity is online today.
Not all of that new capacity will be built. The majority of these projects have yet to break ground; many lack permits or customers. Most projects tied specifically to data centers have yet to confirm if they’ve locked down ever-elusive gas turbines. And while a chunk of these power plants hope to circumvent the grid and power data centers directly, most will seek interconnection — a process from which a whopping 75% of capacity has historically dropped out, according to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
These figures are also inflated by AI exuberance. What actually gets built will depend, to a substantial degree, on the strength and durability of demand for AI services. Many of the largest projects — and they are really big — are tied to data center plans that are far from a certainty.
Report author Jenny Martos put it bluntly to Axios: “It is nearly impossible nowadays to guess what is a pie-in-the-sky proposal, and what has a real chance of getting built.”
But I don’t want to downplay the 52 GW of gas that’s already under construction. It’s more than any other country is building, which makes sense given that the U.S. is by far the largest producer of natural gas in the world.
