Data Centers Are Driving a US Gas Boom

Data centers have caused the request for gas-fired powerfulness successful the US to detonate implicit the past 2 years, according to caller probe released Wednesday. More than a 3rd of this caller demand, the probe found, is explicitly linked to state projects that volition powerfulness information centers—the equivalent of vigor that would powerfulness tens of millions of US homes.

The findings from Global Energy Monitor, a San Francisco–based nonprofit that tracks lipid and state developments, travel arsenic the Trump medication is some encouraging information halfway build-out and doing distant with contamination regulations connected powerfulness plants and lipid and state extraction. They volition besides astir surely mean an summation successful US greenhouse state emissions, adjacent if immoderate of the projects tracked by Global Energy Monitor ne'er get built.

“The implications are immense erstwhile you’re talking astir this size of a build-out,” says Jonathan Banks, a elder clime advisor astatine Clean Air Task Force, a nonprofit that works to trim emissions. (Clean Air Task Force was not progressive successful the Global Energy Monitor research.)

Building each the gas-fired powerfulness infrastructure that was successful improvement astatine the extremity of past twelvemonth could summation the US state fleet by astir 50 percent, according to Global Energy Monitor’s findings. The US presently has astir 565 gigawatts of gas-fired powerfulness connected the grid. If each the projects successful the improvement pipeline are built, it would adhd astir 252 gigawatts of state powerfulness to the US fleet. (Estimates vary, but 1 gigawatt tin powerfulness up to a cardinal homes, depending connected the vigor usage of the region.)

Data centers person helped to astir triple the request for gas-fired powerfulness successful the US implicit the past 2 years. When Global Energy Monitor past released its tracker, successful aboriginal 2024, it logged astir 85 gigawatts of gas-fired powerfulness successful the improvement pipeline successful the US. Just implicit 4 gigawatts of that improvement were explicitly earmarked for information centers. But successful 2025, much than 97 gigawatts of request tracked were from projects that volition beryllium utilized to powerfulness information centers—almost 25 times higher than the 2024 figures.

“About a twelvemonth and a fractional ago, we started to spot this summation successful proposals for information centers specifically,” says Jenny Martos, a probe expert astatine Global Energy Monitor who worked connected the report.

To enactment unneurotic the research, Global Energy Monitor reviewed publically disposable sources of information connected state powerfulness build-outs successful the pipeline. These see state-level regulatory filings, aerial prime permits, and nationalist announcements from companies. (Martos says that the radical compared its findings with industry-held information arsenic a benchmark.)

As the information halfway build-out continues crossed the country, developers are scrambling to unafraid powerfulness from immoderate and each sources—and utilities are racing to conscionable the projected demand. This has meant that dirtier powerfulness sources are getting a 2nd changeable astatine staying online: coal-fired powerfulness plants astir the state person precocious been fixed extensions connected their status dates, boosted by coal-friendly policies from the Trump administration.

Natural state is simply a overmuch cleaner powerfulness enactment than coal-fired power, but state plants bash merchandise CO₂ emissions. About 35 percent of US energy-related CO₂ emissions successful 2022 came from burning earthy gas.

“Gas is cleaner erstwhile burnt than coal, but erstwhile you're talking astir this overmuch gas, you're talking astir a batch of CO₂ associated with it, too,” says Banks.

A larger interest with earthy state is methane leaks during the extraction process. Methane stays for a shorter play of clip successful the ambiance than CO₂, but it is 80 times much potent implicit a 20 twelvemonth period. Climate scientists accidental that decreasing methane emissions implicit the shorter word is important to controlling clime alteration successful the agelong run. It’s estimated that lipid and state accumulation accounts for a 3rd of each planetary methane leaks; the US is the largest shaper of earthy state successful the world.