Surge in gas-fired power for data centers, with Texas leading

By Alton Wallace
The Center Square

The amount of gas-fired power generation in development in the U.S. nearly tripled over the past year to a record-high 252 gigawatts, with a third of the planned additions in Texas, as utilities and technology companies raced to meet soaring demand from data centers servicing the artificial intelligence boom.

New gas-fired power generation jumped from 4 gigawatts in early 2025 to 97 gigawatts in January 2026, according to a report by the Global Energy Monitor, a nonprofit organization that tracks additions to global energy infrastructure.

Many of the developers of the largest projects want to install natural gas plants directly at the site of new data centers, which allows them to avoid the seven-year wait typically required to get a standard grid connection.

In response, the amount of gas power generation being developed in Texas has surged fourfold in the last year, with the total now more than the next seven states combined, according to the energy-focused nonprofit.

Louisiana, where natural gas power generation projects under development reached 12.2 gigawatts in early 2026, and Pennsylvania, with 8.8 gigawatts of planned capacity additions, rank a distant second and third behind Texas.

“We have seen activity accelerate in the last few months,” said Peter Cook, a partner at Permian Power Connection, an organizer of conferences and events for off-grid power generation developers.

“Several new, very large projects in Texas have been announced since September, and before that there had been talk but no announcements,” Cook said. “Speed to market is critical – long waits to get power from the grid just doesn’t work for a lot of businesses, so these are companies looking at other alternatives and realizing some of the benefits of controlling and owning their own power supplies.”

About half of the gas-generation projects being developed in Texas –with total capacity of 40 gigawatts – will operate off the state’s power grid and provide energy directly at data center sites.

If all of the 252 gigawatts of planned gas-fired power generation capacity were built in 2026, it would dwarf the previous annual record of 100 gigawatts set in 2002, according to the energy-focused nonprofit.

Buildout slowed by grid hookup times, equipment shortages

Long wait times for new users wanting to connect large loads to power grids is driving a race to provide gas-fired power generation directly where data centers are built, often through connections to pipelines nearby.

The states that lead the nation in natural gas production – Texas, Pennsylvania and Louisiana – are the primary locations for the development of off-grid power generation, said Ed Hirs, energy fellow at the University of Houston.

Hirs said recent changes to the regulatory framework now being considered by the Electric Reliability Corporation of Texas, or ERCOT, the grid operator in the state, could speed reviews of off-grid, gas fired power projects.

In late January, ERCOT proposed a new “Batch Study process” to replace the previous method of reviewing projects individually. ERCOT will take a system-wide approach aimed at identifying the total transmission capacity the state grid can deliver, rather than studying projects in isolation. “Batch Zero” would be announced soon and future batches could enter the regulatory process every six months, under ERCOT’s proposed plan.

Hirs said other changes proposed by ERCOT should help make the regulatory process more efficient, including requiring developers to defray some of the costs of regulation with upfront fees.

“Requiring the developers of these big projects to pay a fee up front, in cash, should help us get a good idea of which proposals are serious,” said Hirs. “All of these interconnection requests are overwhelming public utility commissions –not just in Texas – and they need to hire new people.”

In Pennsylvania, Gov. Josh Shapiro on Wednesday announced that data center developers would need to generate their own power or pay the full cost. The directive is aimed at setting up guardrails to ensure that residents and small businesses do not see their utility bills rise to subsidize big technology companies.

At the same time, delays in obtaining the transformers, large turbines and other power equipment needed to serve high-load customers is forcing data center developers to make alternative plans.

Wait times of five to seven years on orders of the highly efficient J-Class and other turbines used to generate power at the biggest gas-fired power plants are pushing so-called hyperscalers and large industrial energy users to turn to smaller alternatives that are faster to deploy, usually in one to four years, but burn 30% to 50% more gas per megawatt hour.

Energy conglomerate Siemens Energy said this week it will resume production of J-Class gas turbines at a factory in Charlotte, North Carolina, where the company plans to invest about $1 billion, as reported by The Center Square. In recent months, gas turbine manufacturers GE Vernova and Mitsubishi Power have announced plans to increase production at their U.S. plants.

In January, GE Vernova reported an 83-gigawatt backlog in its gas power business, while Mitsubishi has already booked most production in 2027 and 2028 for the company’s existing orders.

Off-grid plant in Texas issued record air quality permit

More than 75% of the 80.6 gigawatts of gas-fired power generation now under development in Texas, equal to 57.9 gigawatts of capacity, has either received all permits or the project developers have begun construction, according to Global Energy Monitor data.

Pacifico Energy’s GW Ranch project in Pecos County in west Texas, engineered to host hyperscale data centers and artificial intelligence innovation, received a state-issued air emissions permit allowing 7.65 gigawatts of gas-fired power generation, the largest certificate of its kind ever issued in the U.S.

The permit issued Jan. 30 by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality also allows for 750 megawatts of solar power generation and 1.8 gigawatts of battery storage at the artificial intelligence campus in west Texas.

The approval “clears a critical path for delivering power at a scale the market urgently needs,” said Constantyn Gieskes, vice president of project development at Pacifico Energy. “With all site delineations complete, permits in-hand, and turbines secured, GW Ranch will provide customers with power in the first half of 2027 with a guaranteed pathway to scale to over 5 gigawatts.”

The air quality permit authorizes annual emission of over 12,000 tons of regulated air pollutants along with 33 million tons of greenhouse gases. For comparison, the 3.7-gigawatt W.A. Parish coal/gas power generation plant near Houston is authorized to emit 38-45 million tons of regulated air pollutants and 14-16 million tons of greenhouse gases on an annual basis.

Local and regional leaders highlight the project’s economic impact, noting that long-term investment, construction activity and ongoing operations will create jobs, spur regional growth and reinforce Texas’s position as a national leader in energy development.

Other major gas-fired projects announced in 2025 include a 11-gigawatt plant proposed by Fermi America for its project Matador, an energy and data complex near Amarillo. Chevron is negotiating to build its first-ever dedicated power plant, which would support a behind-the-meter artificial intelligence data center complex with 5 gigawatts of generation capacity in the Permian Basin of west Texas.

Stargate, a collaboration between OpenAI, SoftBank, Oracle and Abu Dhabi-backed fund MGX, is developing an artificial intelligence training cluster powered by off-grid, gas-fired generation near Abilene with planned capacity of 1.2 gigawatts by 2028. Eventually, the training cluster could require 7 gigawatts of power, according to the project’s developers.