You know that artificial intelligence has sparked a potential nuclear renaissance, but while new reactors are planned and weave their way through the permitting process, natural gas power generation is being installed at a rapid pace to keep up with demand. Haley Zaremba reports at OilPrice.com on the buildout of natural gas power generation, writing:
A June report from Business Insider found that “if all data centers permitted through 2025 come online, they will use between 224.3 terawatt-hours and 358.8 terawatt-hours of electricity annually, an increase of 50% over the previous year across the range.” For reference, that’s approximately as much energy as all of Mexico — a country with a population of more than 130 million people — uses in a year.
As of the first six months of 2026, the United States had 378 GW of gas-fired power capacity in development, up 50 percent in just six months, according to Global Energy Monitor. Of that, 189 GW was tied directly to data centers. The U.S. now accounts for roughly one-third of all planned gas-fired capacity worldwide, while Texas is adding new proposals faster than anywhere else.
High demand for gas turbines has created shortages and long wait times. Some companies like SpaceX are looking to speed up production of gas turbines in order to shorten delivery times. SpaceX’s Elon Musk explained, “SpaceX and Tesla are each building 100GW/year of solar production capacity as fast as possible, but natural gas will still be needed to supplement and bootstrap solar for several years. The limiting factor for nat gas turbine production is casting the blades & vanes. By doing in-house casting at SpaceX, we can accelerate nat gas turbines coming online by up to 18 months, which is a profound game-changer.”
In Power Magazine, Matthew Pistner of NRG Energy, a power generation company, explained the scale of the demand for power generation that the industry faces. He said:
If you go back in time and ask when the U.S. had the kind of growth we’re talking about now, it was really right after World War II until about the end of the 1970s. That 30-plus-year window of demand growth inside the United States is what we’re being asked to do in the next 10 years.
It’s something this country has done before, but what’s changed is the pace and scale of it in such a short period of time.
As data centers became a bigger part of our vocabulary, what you heard in the market was, if you don’t have turbines, you’re not going to solve the problem. Then you heard, if you don’t have transformers and high-voltage equipment, you’re not going to be able to solve the problem.
Because we’re building this plant and the other two plants [Cedar Bayou 5 and Greens Bayou 6], we’ve been experiencing that a little bit longer than everyone else. We realized pretty quickly that if you don’t have labor, all you’re going to have is a lot of expensive equipment sitting in a field waiting for someone to install it.
NRG is building a 1.2 gigawatt combined-cycle power plant in Texas under the “Bring Your Own Power” principle for a leading artificial intelligence company. In some cases, it’s easier for AI companies to just build their own power plants, or contract their own supply with generators, than it is to deal with hooking up to the regulated grid.
Action Line: You should also think about bringing your own power. Building your own microgrid at home and putting some power away in your pantry might not be a bad idea if you want to have a reliable supply. Are you investing in your energy security? Tell me about what you’re doing by emailing me at ejsmith@yoursurvivalguy.com. And click here to subscribe to my free monthly Survive & Thrive letter.
