Key facts
- The US is constructing twice the amount of new gas-fired power generation capacity compared to China.
- This expansion is primarily to meet the electricity demands of a boom in AI-driven data centers.
- Global Energy Monitor found a 76% increase in US under-construction gas projects in the first half of the year.
- The US has seen a 50% increase in its gas power capacity under development since January, reaching 378GW.
- Approximately half of the new US capacity is directly linked to upcoming data centers.
- Estimates suggest powering these data centers with gas could increase US power emissions by up to 20%.
The United States is now building twice as much new gas-fired power generation capacity as China, a significant reversal of previous trends, driven largely by the immense electricity demands of the artificial intelligence boom. A new analysis by Global Energy Monitor (Gem) found that the US has seen a 76% increase in under-construction gas projects in the first half of this year, with overall gas power capacity in development ballooning by 50% since January to 378GW.
This surge in gas power is primarily to feed a rapid expansion of data centers required for AI. Gem estimates that around half of the new capacity is directly tied to these facilities. The report warns that using gas, a fossil fuel, to power this glut of new data centers threatens to increase US power emissions by as much as 20% and locks in decades of pollution and dependence on volatile fuel costs.
Jenny Martos, a project manager at Global Energy Monitor, noted that China previously had more gas plants under construction, but this has now flipped. She highlighted the enormous surge in gas-powered data center proposals over the past year and their significant climate implications.
Despite claims from President Donald Trump and his administration that China's fossil fuel expansion makes US emissions cuts futile, the analysis suggests this equation is changing. The International Energy Agency has forecast that US spending on coal and gas power plants will outstrip China's for the first time in decades. This shift is partly due to China's rapid adoption of clean energy and the US administration's rollback of environmental regulations.
The rush by tech companies like Google, OpenAI, and Amazon to build data centers has created a backlog for efficient gas turbines, leading some companies, including Elon Musk's xAI, to switch to smaller, less efficient, and more polluting turbines. Concerns over climate impact, rising power bills, tax breaks for AI companies, and water shortages—with two-thirds of planned data centers located in drought-stricken areas—are fueling local opposition. A Heatmap poll indicated that three-quarters of Americans do not want to live next to a data center, leading dozens of cities and counties to place restrictions. New York became the first state to enact a temporary ban on new hyper-scale data center permitting and construction.
Despite this backlash, the Trump administration has championed data center development, eliminating environmental reviews to speed up the process. Trump has stated that data centers could be larger than oil and encouraged state governors to cut taxes to attract them, emphasizing the jobs and tax revenue they bring.